New Delhi: The Supreme Court has lashed out at the presiding officer in last week's Chandigarh Mayoral elections and dubbed the process a "mockery of democracy".
"We are appalled by what has happened…We will not allow democracy to be murdered like this," the judges said.
Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud directed that the entire record of the Chandigarh Mayor Elections be sequestered under the custody of the Registrar General of Punjab & Haryana High Court. The CJI also directed that the next meeting of the Municipal Corporation scheduled for Feb 7 shall stand deferred till further orders.
A bench of Chief Justice CJI) DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra took strong exception to the conduct of the Returning Officer(RO) of the Chandigarh Municipal polls and said, he was seen defacing the ballot papers on video to influence the election results, he should be prosecuted.
The bench issued notice to the Returning Officer Anil Masih and directed that entire records including the ballot papers, videography of the municipal elections and other material be handed over to the High Court Registrar General by 5 PM.
The Court said, “If our conscience is not satisfied, we will order fresh elections," while entertaining the petition by AAP candidate Kuldeep Kumar.
The Court directed Masih to be present on the next date of the hearing to explain his conduct and posted the matter for next Monday.
AAP has challenged the process in which the returning officer cancelled eight votes of the AAP-Cong combine of 20 was invalidated,
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appearing on behalf of the returning officer said that the RO has handed over the entire record in a sealed format to the Deputy Commissioner of the Union Territory of Chandigarh on January 30.
The bench was hearing a plea by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Councillor Kuldeep Kumar challenging the Punjab and Haryana High Court's refusal to grant an immediate stay on the election result in which a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate was declared elected as the Chandigarh Mayor.
BJP’s Manoj Sonkar was elected as Mayor on January 30 after he bagged 16 votes against the 12 votes received by the Congress-AAP candidate Kumar, even though the AAP-Congress alliance had a majority in the house with 20 members.
Eight votes were rejected in the process as invalid, which constituted votes of the AAP-Congress alliance.
Kumar had initially approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court alleging fraud in BJP’s win and sought a free and fair fresh election under the supervision of a retired High Court judge.
The High Court had last week issued notice and listed the matter to be heard after three weeks.
Kumar then approached the Apex Court seeking a stay on the operation of the notification that has been or may be issued for the appointment of Sonkar as the Mayor.
Kumar alleged that in a complete departure from the practice and rules, the Presiding Officer Anil Masih had refused to allow the nominees of parties to monitor the counting of votes.
Kumar stated there were three baskets in front of the Presiding Officer - one each for the candidates of the AAP-Congress alliance and BJP and one for invalid votes.
As per Kumar, a video recording of the election clearly revealed that the Presiding Officer shuffled the votes from one basket to another “only with a view to create a confusion during which he completely compromised the election process by forgery and tampering.”
The petition alleged that the Presiding Officer announced the result after declaring that eight votes were invalid, but “did not utter a single word for the invalidity of the votes and the party to whom these invalid votes were polled."
Advocate General of Punjab Gurminder Singh, Advocates RPS Bara, Ferry Sofat, Kuldeep Kaur appeared in the case for the petitioner-AAP councilor.
