Earlier this month, the Supreme Court came down heavily on the Returning Officer who held the Chandigarh Mayor elections, saying he was “murdering democracy” and ordered the preservation of the entire record of the election process, including ballot papers, videography, and other material, through the Registrar General of Punjab and Haryana High Court.
“It is obvious that he has defaced the ballot papers. He needs to be prosecuted. Why is he looking at the camera? 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. Is this the behaviour of a returning officer? Wherever there is a cross at the bottom, he does not touch it but when it is at the top, he alters it. Please tell the returning officer that the Supreme Court is watching him,” said the three-judge bench of the top court, headed by CJI Chandrachud.
The observations of the apex court came after it watched video of the controversial election.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the Chandigarh mayoral polls against the Congress-AAP alliance on January 30.
BJP candidate Manoj Sonkar was announced as the winner of the Chandigarh Mayoral election after securing 16 votes in the 35-member municipal corporation House, while Kuldeep Kumar, the INDIA bloc candidate of Congress and AAP, received 12 votes.
Eight votes were declared “invalid” by Anil Masih, the presiding officer.
Kuldeep Kumar, had moved the top court to challenge a Punjab and Haryana High Court order that has refused to grant any interim relief to the party, which is seeking fresh mayoral polls in Chandigarh. The AAP had alleged tampering with ballot papers and sought fresh polls under the supervision of a retired judge of the court.
Earlier on Sunday, Sonkar resigned from the post of Chandigarh Mayor, a day before the Supreme Court’s hearing on allegations of irregularities in the vote-counting process.
