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The senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor of the Chandigarh municipal corporation will be elected afresh as a consequence of the February 20 Supreme Court verdict that settled the dust on the weeks-long mayoral poll controversy.
“The other elections which are required to be held in terms of the regulations shall now take place in accordance with law,” says the detailed Supreme Court judgment, which was released on Thursday.
According to legal experts, this effectively means that proceedings before the Punjab and Haryana high court, where Congress’ plea challenging the elections of senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor is pending, become infructuous.
However, while the AAP-Congress alliance has wrested the mayor’s post from the BJP, they are unlikely to succeed in the election for senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor.
After three AAP councillors defected to the BJP on Sunday, two days before the apex court’s verdict, the saffron party now has the numerical edge in the 35-member MC House.
A party needs 19 votes to win the poll, which the BJP has in its kitty, with 17 councillors, one ex-officio vote of BJP MP Kirron Kher and support of the sole SAD councillor.
AAP, on the other hand, is stranded with only 10 councillors, and even the pre-poll alliance with the Congress, which has seven votes, will not help them reach the magic number of 19. At least two of the three turncoat councillors returning to the AAP is the combine’s only hope for victory.
Sources said sensing that polls for these posts were imminent, the BJP had already shifted many of its councillors to a Guest House in Panchkula, fearing defection.
On February 20, the Supreme Court had overturned the results of Chandigarh mayoral polls and declared AAP candidate Kuldeep Dhalor the winner in a landmark decision.
On January 30, BJP’s Manoj Sonkar had won the mayor’s post after the presiding officer, Anil Masih, brazenly scrapped eight votes of the AAP-Congress.
However, a three-judge bench of the top court held the election results to be “patently illegal” and ordered criminal proceedings against Masih, a former BJP office-bearer, for deliberately defacing eight ballots and lying before the court.
Setting aside the elections after perusing the video and the defaced ballot papers, the SC bench said, “This is not an ordinary case of alleged malpractice by candidates in an election, but electoral misconduct by the presiding officer himself. The brazen nature of the malpractice, visible on camera, makes the situation all the more extraordinary, justifying the invocation of the power of this court under Article 142.”
After being elected as mayor, Sonkar had conducted election of senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor, where BJP candidates Kuljeet Sandhu and Rajinder Sharma were declared winners, respectively, with 16 votes each, after AAP and Congress councillors staged a walk-out. The mayor serves as the presiding officer for the election of these two posts.
“Since election of the mayor has been quashed, the subsequent action of conduct of election by the mayor, which was declared illegal, also becomes void as per SC verdict,” said Ferry Sofat, one of the lawyers involved in the litigation.
Kejriwal, Mann to attend mayor’s swearing-in ceremony
Having claimed their first victory in the Chandigarh mayoral elections after a hard-fought legal battle, the AAP is set to make the new mayor’s swearing-in ceremony a grand event.
Delhi chief minister and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and his Punjab counterpart Bhagwant Mann will participate in the swearing-in ceremony, scheduled on February 26.
A senior party leader said, “We want to make it a big event ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. The venue for the ceremony will be decided by Saturday.”
He further expressed confidence that out of the three AAP councillors who switched to the BJP recently, two will be returning to the party fold after a word with the new mayor, Kuldeep Dhalor.
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