Chandigarh Mayor Polls: SC Will Oversee Vote Recount, Says Eight Rejected Ballots Must Be Added

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court said that it will order a recount of the votes in the Chandigarh mayoral election, including the inclusion of the eight ballots that were rejected. The highest court also declared that eight ballots that were rejected had been submitted for AAP council members.

CJI DY Chandrachud said after reviewing the eight ballots that Anil Masih had rejected: “All eight have the stamp for Kuldeep Kumar (the I.N.D.I.A bloc candidate).” The RO adds a single line and signs at the bottom. He writes a single line everywhere. To Mr. Masih, I have a question. You said that you placed the line there because it was vandalized. Where has the vandalism occurred?

Senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi responded to CJI by saying, “If it is seen clearly, there is a small dot.” What he has done is placed a little dot in one of them. A line tick causes some to fold from the top. In his opinion, he disqualified everyone the same. There was some noise outside, so he watched the video. Nobody with cameras around can accomplish this. No guilty guy is staring into the camera.”

After reviewing the ballots and the video footage of the Chandigarh mayoral vote counting, a three-judge panel led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra rendered their decision.

On January 30, a high-stakes political thriller unfolded when the Bharatiya Janata Party emerged victorious in the mayoral race, ousting the well-positioned AAP-Congress alliance candidate. The returning officer disqualified eight votes of the coalition partners, sparking allegations of voting fraud.

The court ordered the registrar general of the Punjab and Haryana High Court to assign a judicial officer to transport the data securely to New Delhi and submit them before it on Tuesday, expressing “deep concern” about horse trade on Monday.

In accordance with its directive, the highest court further instructed the administration to guarantee the safe transportation of the judicial officer designated by the registrar general. Additionally, the returning officer, Anil Masih, was instructed to stay in attendance.

“We’ll list this tomorrow, review the ballots, and make a decision. The horse trade industry as a whole is quite unsettling. Tomorrow at noon, please also provide the whole video of the vote counting,” the CJI said on Monday.

“We direct that the ballot papers, which have been placed in the custody of the Registrar General of the high court will be produced tomorrow morning before this court at 10:30 am by a judicial officer to be nominated by the Registrar General…,”the bench said in its order following a brief hearing.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Chandigarh government, proposed conducting new elections under the supervision of a judge appointed by the high court in order to “obviate allegations/counter allegations.”

The lawyer representing the Aam Aadmi Party councillor angrily disagreed with the proposal.