Mayor moves SC, demands election by ‘show of hands’

Chandigarh Mayor Kuldeep Kumar has moved the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the UT Administration to hold the mayoral election by “show of hands”, instead of the ‘secret ballot’ method to ensure fairness in the process.

A Bench, led by Justice Surya Kant, today issued notice to the Administration asking it to respond to the Mayor’s petition, which also demanded appointment of an independent observer to conduct free and fair elections. The Bench posted the matter for further hearing on January 27.

Hinting at appointing a retired judge to oversee the election process, the Bench, which also included Justice N Kotiswar Singh, made it clear that the election process shall continue. On behalf of Kuldeep, who is from AAP, senior counsel Gurminder Singh sought to draw the court’s attention to the 2024 incident of ballot tampering by the presiding officer and requested it to order the election to be held by “show of hands”, instead of the ‘secret ballot’ method in order to ensure fairness in the process.

The Bench said the petitioner wanted to have “free and fair” elections and the top court will ensure it. The Bench also asked the counsel to suggest a name for a person to be appointed as election observer.

Kuldeep has challenged the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s order rescheduling the poll after January 29 and ordering him to continue as Mayor till then.

The counsel said the Punjab and Haryana High Court held that Kuldeep was entitled to function as the Chandigarh Mayor for 12 months from January 30, 2024, when the results were first declared, instead of February 20, 2024, when the results were set aside and he declared elected Mayor by the Supreme Court.

“It will be the date of election which in this case is January 30 and not February 20, when his election was restored. You were declared elected as mayor from the very date of inception. It does not depend on the time of physical occupation of the seat,” said Justice Surya Kant, noting that no fresh election was ordered.

Setting aside the Chandigarh mayoral poll results, the Supreme Court had on February 20 last year declared AAP-Congress combine candidate Kuldeep Kumar the winner.

Using its plenary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution, a three-judge Bench led by CJI DY Chandrachud (since retired) held that the eight votes declared invalid were validly cast in favour of Kuldeep and who had, in fact, got 20 votes against 16 votes of BJP candidate Manoj Sonkar.