INDIA alliance won first election courtesy Supreme Court
Kanwar Inder singh/royalpatiala.in News/ February 20,2024
In a first of its kind case, the Supreme Court’s three-judge bench presided by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud comprising Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra on Tuesday quashed the result of the January 30 elections for the post of Mayor of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation in which the BJP’s Manoj Sonkar was elected as mayor of the city beautiful and declared Kuldeep Kumar, the joint candidate put up by the AAP-Congress combine, as the winner.
Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, said the eight ballots on which the presiding officer Anil Masih had made a marking were validly cast in favour of Kuldeep Kumar, who had approached the apex court against the outcome of the January 30 poll.
The top court held that the presiding officer intentionally defaced eight votes that were for the alliance candidate, to invalidate them.
Senior advocate A M Singhvi told SC that returning officer misled court yesterday by saying that he put his marks on papers as they were already defaced. Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for RO said that he did not act with bad intentions.
The apex court made it clear that it was not quashing the entire electoral exercise and restricting itself to dealing with the wrongdoings in the counting process, which led to the invalidation of eight votes cast in Kumar’s favour.
Today, the ballot papers of Chandigarh mayor election placed before SC and court notes that all 8 invalidated ballot were cast in favour of Congress-AAP joint candidate Kuldeep Kumar
Earlier, the bench opined that Masih should be prosecuted for interfering with the election process. The Court said that instead of ordering a fresh election, it would order the counting of votes based on the existing ballots by a neutral Presiding Officer.
INDIA alliance won first battle courtesy Supreme Court as Kuldeep Kumar is a joint candidate of AAP and Congress.
