High Court puts Chandigarh on notice

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 4

The Punjab and Haryana High Court today issued a notice of motion to the UT on a petition by Anju Katyal of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and two other councillors. They had moved the court for declaring the election results for the Chandigarh Mayor’s post illegal. Directions were also sought to hold fresh elections for the Mayor’s post.

The Bench of Justice Ritu Bahri and Justice Ashok Kumar Verma fixed February 22 as the next date of hearing in the case. In their plea, Katyal, Prem Lata and Ram Chander Yadav had submitted that their petition pointed out “various political atrocities openly carried out at the behest of ruling political party bigwigs in Chandigarh”. The petitioners had submitted that AAP secured 14 seats and became the largest party in the elections. However, the result did not go down well with the BJP, which was in “power in the Municipal Corporation in the last elections”.

Upon counting of all 28 polled votes, eight votes were kept out for “defects”. “AAP clearly won with a margin of two votes, 11 votes falling into the kitty of petitioner Katyal of AAP and nine to the BJP candidate,” the petitioners added.

However, the presiding officer and the prescribed authority-cum-Divisional Commissioner arbitrarily started to reconsider the eight votes from the cancelled/rejected lot and proceeded to declare a torn/mutilated voter slip cast to a BJP candidate as good for counting.

The petitioners had added the final tally headed for a tie with 14 votes each, even after counting the defective/torn voter slip cast. The presiding officer, himself an elected BJP councillor, started playing otherwise by picking one ballot slip/vote cast in the petitioner’s favour to cite a mark on its backside without showing it. The respondents immediately declared the vote/ballot slip in the petitioner’s favour as “cancelled”. The BJP candidate was suddenly declared elected with a 14-13 margin to the utmost shock and surprise of the petitioner, other members of the House and the public at large, it was added.

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