Chandigarh Mayor Polls: SC orders fresh counting of votes, seeks ballots and video recordings

Chandigarh Mayor Polls: SC orders fresh counting of votes, seeks ballots and video recordings

The Supreme Court on Monday (Feb 19) ordered fresh counting of existing ballot papers instead of a fresh election for the post of Chandigarh mayor.

The court said that the ballot papers of the Chandigarh mayoral elections as well as the entire video recording be produced before it by 2 pm on February 20. The court also asked the Registrar General of the Punjab and Haryana High Court to depute a judicial officer, who will be provided with security, to bring the material safely.

Earlier, the returning officer in the Chandigarh Mayor election Anil Masih reached the Supreme Court on Monday (Feb 19) after being ordered to appear as he had allegedly tampered with the electoral ballots.

This came after a bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud questioned the presiding officer Anil Masih, as to why he put ‘X’ marks on eight ballot papers and he said that he had found them to be ‘defaced’.

The top court said that votes will be counted by disregarding the ‘X’ marks. The court stated that it will ask the Deputy Commissioner of Chandigarh to nominate a neutral officer to be the returning officer to count the ballots and declare the results, reported Live Law.

Earlier, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Manoj Sonkar quit from the post of Chandigarh Mayor on Sunday (Feb 18) ahead of the Supreme Court hearing about claims of irregularities in the voting procedure.

In the first week of February, the Supreme Court denounced the Returning Officer, who conducted the Chandigarh Mayor elections, stating that he was “murdering democracy”, further directing the preservation of all election records, including ballot papers video footage and other material, through the Registrar General of Punjab and Haryana High Court.

A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra stated that it was very evident that the voting papers were vandalised by the returning officer.

“Is this the way he conducts the elections? This is a mockery of democracy. This is the murder of democracy. We are appalled. We will not allow democracy to be murdered this way. The man defaces ballots the moment he sees a cross at the bottom. This man should be prosecuted. Is this the behaviour of the returning officer?”

It ordered that the Chandigarh Corporation meeting, scheduled for February 7, be postponed till further notice.

“Tell the Returning Officer that the Supreme Court is watching him. We will not allow democracy to be murdered like this. The great force in this country is the purity of the electoral process, but what has happened here?,” said the bench.

The observations made by the top court came after it viewed footage of the contentious election.

The Supreme Court made these comments at the time of hearing the AAP councillor’s plea after the Bharatiya Janata Party won the mayoral election after the Returning Officer scraped eight opposition votes.

Aam Aadmi Party’s councillor Kuldeep Dhalor had filed a petition after losing the mayor election to BJP’s Party’s Manoj Sonkar on Jan 30.

BJP’s Sonkar received 16 votes as opposed to Kumar’s 12 votes. The action of rejecting eight votes of the AAP-Congress alliance as invalid sparked the allegations of vote tampering.

(With inputs from agencies)