New Delhi: The controversial election for the Chandigarh Mayor has come under the lens of the Supreme Court, which slammed the Returning Officer of the election and declared that it would not allow the "murder of democracy". Aam Aadmi Party, which had gone to court, had lost the election to the BJP despite having the numbers, after eight votes were marked invalid. Declaring that it would hear the case on February 12, the top court ordered the Registrar General to secure all the records by 5 pm today.
"Is this the behaviour of a returning officer? He looks at the camera, and defaces the ballot obviously," Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said furiously after viewing a video of the counting today.
"Where there is a cross at the bottom (of the ballot paper), he (the Returning Officer) puts it into the tray. The moment there is a cross at the top, the man defaces the ballot and looks at the camera. Tell him that the Supreme Court is watching him. We will not allow democracy to be murdered like this. The great stabilising force in the country is the purity of the election process," said the Chief Justice, who is part of the three-judge bench hearing AAP's petition.
AAP claimed the officer, Anil Masih, was caught on camera tampering with the ballot papers and demanded that he be arrested. The eight votes cancelled would have won them the election, the party contended. AAP's ally Congress alleged that the BJP workers tore up the ballot papers and their agent was not allowed to see them.
The BJP has 14 councillors in the 35-member corporation, AAP 13 and its ally Congress, seven. Besides going to court, AAP has held mega protests in Delhi and Chandigarh over the issue.
In its petition, AAP had alleged that the elections were not conducted in a free and fair manner. Ballot papers were tampered with and results were declared in favor of BJP.
The party has called for canceling the election, sealing the records, banning the mayor from assuming office, an investigation into the rigging and a fresh election under the supervision of a retired judge of the High Court.
The party went to the top court after a bench of Justice Sudhir Singh and Justice Harsh Bangar of Punjab and Haryana High Court refused to grant it any interim relief.
At the top court, the three-judge bench of Chief Justice Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Mishra, put a freeze on the budget session of the civic body, which was expected to be presented on Tuesday. The budget cannot be presented till further orders, the judges said.
The BJP had swept the mayoral polls, in a setback to the AAP-Congress alliance, which had claimed the election was an acid test for the INDIA bloc. BJP candidate Manoj Sonkar defeated AAP's Kuldeep Kumar, polling 16 votes against his rival's 12. Eight votes were declared invalid.