“Threatened or bought” says Chandigarh AAP President after AAP councillors join BJP

Chandigarh [India], February 19 (ANI): After Three Aam Aadmi Party Chandigarh councillors joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in the national capital on Sunday evening Chandigarh AAP President Sunny Singh Ahluwalia alleged that they had been threatened or brought by the BJP.

“They launched ‘Operation Lotus’. The councillors who were protesting against them just three days ago, fighting for democracy, were either threatened or brought by the BJP and the same is going on inside the country,” Sunny Singh Ahluwalia said.

The three Aam Aadmi Party Chandigarh councillors who joined BJP are Punam Devi, Neha Musawat, and Gurcharan Kala in the presence of party National General Secretary Vinod Tawde, in Delhi.

Ahead of the Supreme Court hearing on allegations of irregularities in the vote-counting process, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Manoj Sonkar resigned from the post of Chandigarh Mayor on Sunday.

Reacting on BJP’s resignation from the Mayor post, party President of Chandigarh Jatinder Pal Malhotra said, “The mayor resigned on Sunday afternoon. Aam Aadmi Party and Congress propaganda is out in the open. They are abusing each other in the rest of the country and they are making an alliance in Chandigarh.”

“The Congress workers did not want a Congress Mayor, which is why they cross-voted… To stop AAP’s propaganda, we have resigned… More workers and the councillors of the AAP and Congress will join the BJP soon, he added.

The mayoral elections case is listed before the Supreme Court on February 19.

Earlier on February 5, the Supreme Court came down heavily on the Returning Officer who held the Chandigarh Mayor elections, saying he was “murdering democracy” and ordered the preservation of the entire record of the election process, including ballot papers, videography and other material, through the Registrar General of Punjab and Haryana High Court.

A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said it is obvious that the returning officer had defaced the ballot papers.

“Is this the way he conducts the elections? This is a mockery of democracy. This is the murder of democracy. We are appalled. We will not allow democracy to be murdered this way. The man defaces ballots the moment he sees a cross at the bottom. This man should be prosecuted. Is this the behaviour of the returning officer?,” said the court.