Chandigarh polls

THE BJP has made a clean sweep in the Chandigarh mayoral polls, retaining the top three posts amid an outcry by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress. The two allies have alleged that ballot papers were tampered with by the presiding officer, a nominated BJP councillor, to give an unfair advantage to the BJP. The BJP candidate for the mayor’s post, Manoj Sonkar, got 16 votes, four more than his rival, AAP-Congress’s Kuldeep Dhalor. Notably, eight votes were declared invalid.

The relatively high number of invalid votes has raised many eyebrows and put a question mark on the entire electoral process. Greater transparency could have prevented this unsavoury situation, especially considering the Congress-AAP allegation that their agent was not allowed to examine the ballot papers. Tuesday’s elections were held on the directions of the Punjab and Haryana High Court after being postponed under controversial circumstances on January 18. The presiding officer had purportedly been taken ill at that time. The court had quashed the order postponing the elections, terming it ‘unreasonable, unjustified and arbitrary.’

The mayoral polls had been billed as the last major faceoff between the BJP and the INDIA bloc before the Lok Sabha elections. The AAP and the Congress, which are working at cross purposes in Punjab, had joined hands in a bid to upset the BJP applecart in Chandigarh. The poll outcome has been challenged in the high court, even as the role of the presiding officer has come under intense scrutiny. It is imperative to ascertain if the due process was strictly followed while conducting the elections. The use of unfair or underhand means by any political party not only precludes a level playing field but also runs contrary to the spirit of democracy. The secrecy of the ballot must be respected, but it should not be misused to create opacity.