Ashok Sridharan, a mayoral candidate of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has has comprehensively won the election in the former German capital of Bonn. He is the first person of Indian origin to be elected mayor in a major German city.
Sridharan, 49 years old, has secured an absolute majority by polling 50.06 per cent of the votes in Sunday’s election. His victory ends the Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) 21 year rule in Bonn.
He is the son of an Indian migrant and a German mother. Sridharan will assume his role as the head of the city administration from the outgoing SPD mayor, Juergen Nymptsch. He has previously served as the treasurer and assistant mayor in the municipal administration of the neighbouring Koenigswinter. Political observers predicted a close finish, and Sridharan’s absolute majority in the first round of the election came as a surprise to many.
His nearest rivals finished far behind him with a share of 23.68 and 22.14 per cent of the votes.
Only around 45 per cent of the city’s 245,000 voters went to the polls to cast their votes, far fewer than the turn-out in the last election in Bonn in 2009.