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Poll petitions filed against five councillors of AAP

As the 45-day time to file election petitions for the Municipal Corporation elections held on December 21 lapsed yesterday, five petitions have been moved in that period against Aam Aadmi Party councillors before the Election Tribunal, Jalandhar. While one petition...
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Balbir Singh Bittu Dhillon
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As the 45-day time to file election petitions for the Municipal Corporation elections held on December 21 lapsed yesterday, five petitions have been moved in that period against Aam Aadmi Party councillors before the Election Tribunal, Jalandhar.

While one petition has been received in the office of SDM-2 Balbir Raj Singh, four have been received in the office of SDM-1 Randeep Heer. A petition against Ward No. 48 councillor Harjinder Ladda has been moved by Independent candidate Shiv Nath (Shiv Lahoria), who had lost by a single vote but the complainants in the remaining petitions are Congress candidates.

The AAP councillors, who are on the radar of the Congress, are Senior Deputy Mayor Balbir Bittu, his wife Karamjit Kaur, Ashwani Aggarwal and Amit Dhall. In the petitions against Bittu, Karamjit Kaur and Aggarwal, who contested from Ward no. 11, 10 and 80, respectively, it has been alleged that they did not file form no. 20 in the nomination paper and annexure 2 in proper form and left the mandatory columns blank, owing to which their papers were liable to have been cancelled.

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The copies of petitions further read, "These blatant violations cannot be oversight. Objections raised by the applicants were also left unadjudicated. The details regarding the income and properties were intentionally not disclosed. The Returning Officer has not discharged his duty with fairness and undue favours had been given to the candidates of the ruling party. Improper electoral rolls were intentionally prepared and votes were readied without photographs and epic card numbers. The supplementary list was improper and filled with bogus votes. The candidates did not disclose several expenses incurred on setting up booths, use of vehicles etc".

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'How will SDMs hear against themselves?'

A more interesting fact is that two petitions have been filed in the court of SDM Heer against Heer himself as the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) and controller over RO. Parminder Vig, a lawyer, who has filed three election petitions, said, "The issue of SDMs being appointed as the Presiding Officers in the Election Tribunals needs to be looked into. They were the ones to have served as the EROs and exercised supervisory powers over the ROs. How can they hear against themselves? The system needs to be corrected or else we cannot expect justice". He sought that the ADC or DC should ideally be heading the Tribunal.

What SDM says

SDM Balbir Raj Singh said, "It is routine for the SDMs to be appointed in the Election Tribunals. This time, the SDMs were not donning the role of ROs as it was with senior officials in other departments. So we were not directly involved." It is learnt that there are other districts where SDMs were functioning as ROs themselves and have been appointed in the Tribunal too.

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