On Tuesday, the Supreme Court overturned the decision and declared Kuldeep Kumar, the AAP- Congress Alliance candidate as the Mayor of Chandigarh, simultaneously scrapping the result of the election previously conducted. This cancellation was sparked following the nullification of eight Aam Aadmi Party votes by Anil Masih, a Returning Officer additionally a former Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) office- bearer had deemed the eight votes as “invalid.” In turn, the SC also charged Anil Masih for intentionally vandalizing the eight ballots as well as deceiving the court.
The bench comprising of three judges of the Supreme Court deemed the previous election and its results as “patently illegal.”
Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, the Chief Justice of India who led the bench stated to the press, “We order and direct that the election result, as declared by the presiding officer Anil Masih, will stand set aside and the petitioner (Kuldeep Kumar) will be declared elected as the Mayor of the Chandigarh municipal corporation.”
It all began on 30 January, BJP was declared as the winner in the poll following the invalidation of eight votes of the Opposing party, these instigated accusations of vote fraud. Previously, the INDIA bloc candidate, Kuldeep Kumar was predicted to be the winner with AAP’s 13 members, adjoined by Congress with its 7. Despite that, the BJP candidate, Manoj Sonkar was nominated as the winner after Anil Masih invalidated eight AAP votes. Masih announced the eight ballot papers to behaving pen marks and were defaced. But later on, CCTV footage showed the scene of Anil Masih himself damaging the ballot papers.
Rahul Gandhi on X, called Masih a pawn stating, “In the BIP’S conspiracy to murder democracy Masih is just a pawn, behind it is “face” of Modi.”
