The Patiala Municipal Corporation is a Nagar Nigam (Municipal Corporation) which administers the city of Patiala, Punjab. It has 60 members elected with a first-past-the-post voting system and 3 ex-officio members which are MLAs for Patiala,Patiala Rural and Sanour. The corporation was founded on 24 September 1997, and the first elections were held in June 2002. History of Patiala Famous for ‘peg’, ‘pagri’, ‘paranda’ (tasselled tag for braiding hair and ‘Jutti’ (footwear), joyous buoyance, royal demeanor, sensuous and graceful feminine gait and Aristocracy, Patiala presents a beautiful bouquet of life-style even to a casual visitor to the city. A brilliant spectrum of Rajput, Mughal and Punjabi cultures, a fine blend of modernity and tradition and a judicious synthesis of all that is beautiful in form and bold in spirit conjure up a vision called ‘Patiala’ Patiala, an erstwhile princely state, capital of PEPSU and a district headquarters of Punjab are situated in the Malwa region of Punjab. Malwa has the largest number Of districts in the reorganised Punjab, and antiquity of some of the cities goes back to the ancient and early medieval period. Patiala is relatively a young city, a few years more than two centuries old. In the 18th century, the political vacuum created by the downfall of the Mughals was successfully filled up by the Sikh Misldars in Punjab by thwarting the designs of both the Marathas and the Afghans. One among these independent principalities of the Sikhs was that established by Baba Ala Singh at Patiala. The early history of the founders of Patiala state is more of a myth mystery than reality. The rulers of the erstwhile states of Patiala, Nabha and Jind trace their ancestry to one Chaudhary Phul. Apparently the appellation of dynasty ‘Phulkian’ is derived from their common founder. One of his sons, Chaudhary Ram Singh was baptised and blessed by Guru Gobind Singh. His son Ala Singh assumed the leadership in 1714 A.D. when Banda Bahadur was engaged in the fierce struggle against the Mughals. A man with vision and courage, Ala Singh carved out an independent principality from a petty Zamindari of 30 villages. Under his successors, it expanded into a big State, touching the Shivaliks in north, Rajasthan in the south and upper courses of the Jamuna and the Sutlej. While confronting the most trying and challenging circumstances in the middle eighteenth century, Baba Ala Singh, unlike many of his contemporaries, displayed tremendous courage and shrewdness in dealing with the Mughals, Afghans and Marathas, and successfully established and maintained a state which he had started building up bit by bit from its nucleus Barnala. In 1763 Baba Ala Singh laid the foundation of the Patiala fort known as Qila Mubarak, around ‘which the present city of Patiala is built.