The INDIA bloc candidate did not receive instant relief from the Punjab and Haryana high court about the holding of new Chandigarh mayoral elections on Wednesday, January 31.
Hours after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate was proclaimed the winner, Kuldeep Dhalor, the petitioner and joint mayoral candidate of the Aam Aadmi Party and Congress, urged the court to annul the results of Tuesday’s mayoral elections and requested new ones.
According to Dhalor, the results of the mayoral election were the product of outright fraud and forgery on the part of the presiding officer, Anil Masih, a BJP member and nominated councillor in the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation (MC). He asserted that Masih merely shifted the ballots between baskets to cause confusion, and that by forging and manipulating, he seriously jeopardised the integrity of the electoral process. Additionally, he broke the norms by not allowing any observers from the Congress or AAP during the vote-counting process.
Manoj Kumar, the BJP candidate, won the polls shortly after the presiding officer ruled that eight ballots from opposition benches were invalid, despite the fact that the INDIA bloc had more votes in the 35-member Chandigarh Municipal Council. The AAP and Congress claim that the presiding officer manipulated the votes on purpose to help the BJP candidate win the polls.
After hearing the case, the high court did not provide the petitioner any immediate relief, but it did send a notice to the UT administration requesting a response within three weeks. The current date of the case is February 26.
Congressmen in Chandigarh staged a large-scale protest in front of the MC office, accusing the BJP of winning the mayoral elections in an undemocratic way. Additionally, there was hostility between the demonstrators and the police, which led to the detention of multiple party members. Workers from the AAP also staged a protest, accusing the BJP of violating the popular mandate by using violent and undemocratic tactics.
BJP members, however, denied the accusations and asserted that the INDIA bloc candidate’s loss in the poll was caused by a division inside the Congress and AAP. They brought up the AAP’s resolution to contest the Lok Sabha elections in Punjab by itself following preliminary discussions over a pre-poll alliance.
