New Delhi: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an urgent plea from an AAP councillor challenging a Punjab and Haryana High Court decision that declined interim relief for the party’s request for fresh mayoral elections in Chandigarh. Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, representing councillor Kuldeep Kumar, brought the matter before a bench led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud. Singhvi highlighted a video purportedly showing the returning officer tampering with ballots. The bench, which also included Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, assured they would review the matter.
In the recent Chandigarh mayoral polls, the BJP secured all three positions, dealing a blow to the Congress-AAP coalition, which alleged ballot tampering. The High Court, through a division bench of Justices Sudhir Singh and Harsh Bunger, rejected the AAP’s plea for fresh polls and issued notices to the concerned parties to respond within three weeks.
Kumar, representing AAP, filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the denial of interim relief and the delayed listing of the plea. Meanwhile, the High Court adjourned the matter until February 26. The plea filed in the High Court seeks fresh polls supervised by a retired judge to ensure fairness, citing alleged malpractices during the election, including ballot tampering and biased counting.
Additionally, the petitioner demands an independent agency investigation into the election fraud and requests the preservation of all election-related records. They also seek to prevent the newly-elected mayor from assuming office, alleging the entire election process was tainted by fraud. The Chandigarh Municipal Corporation elections were anticipated as a litmus test for the opposition bloc ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
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