E-Paper
RS polls: Congress disputes Kartikeya’s vote, EC rejects claim
Congress candidate Ajay Maken said that the vote should have been declared invalid and they were exploring legal options to challenge the EC decision
Even as the noise over the invalid vote of a Congress MLA that helped the BJP-backed Independent candidate, Kartikeya Sharma, win a Rajya Sabha seat from Haryana gets louder, the Congress’ claim that one vote cast in favour of Kartikeya was also invalid was rejected by the Election Commission (EC).
During the pre-dawn counting of 89 ballots on Saturday, the Congress counting agents had objected to the validity of a ballot cast in favour of the BJP-backed Independent. “The MLA who cast that ballot did not mark his preference in the column designated for marking preference with a numerical. Instead, it was marked next to the name of the Independent candidate,” party sources said. Congress candidate Ajay Maken said that the vote should have been declared invalid and they were exploring legal options to challenge the EC decision.
What does EC say on such ballot papers
However, as per the Election Commission guidelines, a ballot paper cannot be rejected if the numerical 1 has not been marked in the column meant for marking the order of preferences but at some other place in the panel of candidate. The guidelines said the ballot cannot be rejected if the numerical 1 is marked in the space meant for marking and also marked in the box containing the name of the candidate. The EC says that where, however, such double marking is seen as a pattern adopted by an elector as a predetermined plan to reveal his identity to the candidates concerned, such double marking may be interpreted as leading to a casual connection between the marking and identity of the electors in which case, the ballot papers may be liable to be rejected.
“The Congress counting agents had raised a dispute over the ballot paper. However, the EC observers present at the counting declared it as a valid vote. A complaint sent to the Commission in this regard was also rejected by the EC,” sources said.
Congress candidate Maken was looking good to win but lost the Upper House berth by a slender margin after a Congress vote was declared invalid and Adampur MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi crossed over to vote for BJP-backed Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma.
‘Find out who is the black sheep’
Peeved at the loss, a number of party MLAs have sought an investigation to look for “the black sheep” who betrayed the party by casting an invalid ballot. Rajya Sabha MP Deepender Hooda in a tweet thanked only the 29 party MLAs whose votes were declared valid.
Congress MLA from Faridabad NIT, Neeraj Sharma, said an emergency meeting of the Congress Legislative Party (CLP) be convened to take action against the MLA who betrayed the party. Congress sources said it was quite clear that the tick mark on the ballot cast by a party MLA was intentional to render it invalid.
CLP leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Ajay Maken are learnt to have scrutinised the serial numbers of the votes cast by their MLAs on Saturday.
“It is possible to find out who voted for whom. Since the serial number of the ballot is noted before the name of the MLA voters in the electoral rolls by the polling officials, an invalid vote can be traced during the counting,” said an election official.
The authorised polling agent of the Congress, Vivek Bansal, who saw all 31 votes cast by the Congress MLAs, said he was not able to spot any anomaly in any of the ballots.
Hooda, when asked whether they could spot the MLA whose vote was declared invalid, said he has no information about it. “The party agent may know. The two Congress poll observers would send a report in this regard to the party high command,” he added.
The former chief minister said he had spoken to Bansal and he was quite sure that all the Congress votes were valid.
“Bansal had spotted that Kuldeep Bishnoi cross voted when the latter showed him his ballot. The remaining 30 votes as per him were validly cast in the favour of Congress candidate,” Hooda said.
