Chandigarh mayoral election: Supreme Court directs ‘recounting’, says count 8 rejected ballots as well
Anil Masih, being the returning officer, was entitled to sign. “There is a small dot if it is seen clearly…what he has done is...in one of them there is a small dot…some are folded from the top. He has, by virtue of that line tick, identified for disqualification.
He may be right or wrong. That is his assessment. He looked at the video because there was commotion outside.
No one can do this with cameras present. There is no guilty man looking at the camera," Mukul Rohatgi said. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the Chandigarh Mayor election against the Congress-AAP alliance on January 30.
Manoj Sonkar of the BJP defeated the AAP's Kuldeep Kumar for the mayor's post, polling 16 votes against his rival's 12. Eight votes were declared invalid. If the eight “invalid" votes are counted as per the Supreme Court direction, the AAP-Congress alliance will win the Chandigarh Mayor election.
During a hearing on Monday, February 19, the Supreme Court rapped Returning Officer Anil Masih while observing that it was obvious that he had defaced the ballot papers and that he should be prosecuted. The top court noted that his actions amounted to "murder" and a "mockery" of democracy. Responding to the allegations of the alleged tampering of the ballots, Anil Masih said he did put the "X" mark on eight already "defaced" ballot papers and looked at the camera as the AAP councillors of creating a ruckus and trying to snatch the ballots.
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