Chandigarh: Police use water cannons to disperse NSUI protestors

Chandigarh (Punjab) [India], February 7 (ANI): Police used water cannons to disperse National Student Union of India (NSUI) workers who were conducting a protest against the BJP in Chandigarh over the mayoral election results.

Earlier, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) presented CCTV footage claiming that the BJP Presiding officer had openly destroyed and invalidated votes.

Sharing CCTV footage as ‘proof’ of the ballot paper tampering by the civic poll officer, the Aam Aadmi Party, in a post on social media platform X wrote, “Now accept it, BJP. What can be a greater proof than this? See how the Presiding Officer of BJP openly destroyed the flag of democracy by cancelling the votes himself. This is a living proof of BJP’s dictatorship.”

The Supreme Court had slammed the civic poll officer who held the Chandigarh Mayor elections and said that it is obvious that the returning officer has “defaced” the ballot papers.

“Is this the way he conducts the elections? This is a mockery of democracy. This is a murder of democracy. We are appalled. This man should be prosecuted. Is this the behaviour of the Returning Officer?” Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said.

The apex court further ordered the preservation of an entire record of the election process including ballot papers, videography and other material through the Registrar General of Punjab and Haryana High Court.

The apex court’s remarks came while hearing the plea of AAP’s councillor after the BJP won the mayor election following the Returning Officer’s move to scrape eight opposition votes.

BJP’s Sonkar bagged 16 votes against the 12 votes received by Kumar, despite having 20 councillors. The action of rejecting eight votes of the AAP-Congress alliance as invalid had sparked allegations of vote tempering.

An AAP councillor challenged a Punjab and Haryana High Court order that refused to grant any interim relief to the party seeking fresh mayoral polls in Chandigarh.

Kuldeep Kumar, who lost the Chandigarh mayoral election, approached the apex court against the High Court’s refusal to grant an immediate stay on the election result in which the BJP candidate was declared the mayor.

On Wednesday, the Punjab and Haryana High Court denied interim relief to the AAP, which alleged that ballot papers had been tampered with and sought fresh polls under the supervision of a retired judge of the court.

The appeal in the top court said that the High Court erred in not granting any interim relief to the AAP candidate in the form of a stay on the outcome of elections for the post of Mayor or directing the preservation of electoral records.