Mayoral poll: Chandigarh Mayor Kuldeep 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 Chandigarh Mayoral election by ‘show of hands’ instead of ‘secret ballot’ to ensure fairness in the process.

Advertisement

A Bench led by Justice Surya Kant on Friday issued notice to the Chandigarh Administration asking it to respond to Kumar’s petition which also demanded appointment of an independent observer to conduct free-and-fair elections and posted the matter for further hearing on Monday—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 Kumar, who belongs to the 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 ‘secret ballot’ in order to ensure fairness in the process.

”We all know what happened during the last elections when it was a secret ballot and CCTV video recording, “ Singh submitted.

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

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

Singh said the Punjab and Haryana High Court held that Kumar 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 Kumar declared elected as Chandigarh 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,” Justice Surya Kant said, 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 Kumar and who had in fact got 20 votes against 16 votes of BJP candidate Manoj Sonkar.

”The eight votes which were treated as invalid by making those markings ... counting the 8 votes for the petitioner (AAP candidate Kumar) will make him have 20 votes. We direct that the election result by the presiding officer is quashed. The AAP candidate is declared to be the winner of the Chandigarh mayoral polls,” the Justice Chandrachud had said.

Out of the 36 votes, BJP candidate Manoj Sonkar had bagged 16 votes against the 12 received by Kuldeep Kumar after eight votes were rejected in the January 30 polls to elect the Mayor of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation. However, Sonkar resigned.

Deprecating Returning Officer Anil Masih’s conduct in unlawfully changing the results, the top court ordered initiation of criminal proceedings against him under Section 340 of the Criminal Procedure Code for ballot-tampering.

Masih “unlawfully altered the course of the mayoral election” and the statement he made before the court on February 19 was a “patent falsehood”, the top court had said, directing the Registrar Judicial to issue a notice to Masih, to show cause as to why steps should not be initiated against him under Section 340 CrPC.