HC restrains Sangrur admn from electing Lehragaga MC president

The Punjab and Haryana high court has restrained the Sangrur district administration from convening a meeting for the election to the office of president, municipal council, Lehragaga

The Punjab and Haryana high court has restrained the Sangrur district administration from convening a meeting for the election to the office of president, municipal council, Lehragaga.

HC restrains Sangrur admn from electing Lehragaga MC president

The high court bench of justice Jaswant Singh and justice Sant Parkash acted on the plea of Surinder Singh and Surinder Kaur, two independent candidates for MC polls, and sought response by March 17. They claimed in the court that they had defeated Congress candidates from their respective wards and results too were announced, but subsequently, the certificates of winners were not handed over to them and after allegedly fudging the poll records, Congress candidates were declared as winners.

They have blamed then ex officio returning officer and SDM Jivan Jot Kaur for alleged fabrication of records. The officer waylaid the entire process of fabrication as after declaring the petitioners as winners, she forged and fabricated the form number- 35, the court was told, adding eight independents and seven from the ruling Congress won on the total 15 seats. It is because of this that record was “fudged”, their counsel DS Sobti told court. Voting for the MC took place on February 14 and counting was held on February 17.

The plea says an inquiry was conducted by an IAS officer, Sanjay Popli, into the complaint made by the petitioners, who gave a detailed report to chief election commissioner. The report shows that entire process was sabotaged only to “please” the political bosses. The officer not only abused her power but exceeded her jurisdiction in criminal conspiracy with tehsildar and naib tehsildar, it has been alleged, further submitting that the state election commissioner has already written a letter to the government to immediately suspend Kaur as she has been found “guilty” in the report. However, no action has been taken so far.

The plea demands direction to declare result as per “actual counting” record and “ignore the forged record” and action against the returning officer. It also says either EVMs be moved out of Punjab or be placed in the security cover of the CISF or CRPF. It was also demanded that election to the post of president not be held on the basis of result declared by the administration.