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‘Democracy has been crushed’: Priyanka Gandhi on Chandigarh mayoral polls
BJP's Manoj Sonkar was declared as the new mayor as he received 16 votes, defeating AAP's Kuldeep Singh who got 12 votes.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi on Wednesday hit out at the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) over the Chandigarh mayoral poll results, alleging that the “rules, democracy and the Constitution” were kept aside for the “sake of power”.
“The way democracy has been crushed in the Chandigarh Mayor elections is in front of the entire country. Rules, law, democracy, its dignity and the Constitution were kept aside for the sake of power. The people of the country are seeing that even in the system of one city, the voice of the opposition and the public is being openly suppressed," Gandhi wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter.
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She further questioned: “If they can go to this extent in local bodies, then how can the public trust them in state and central elections? Doubt is spreading on a large scale among the public.”
High drama was witnessed in the Chandigarh mayoral polls on Tuesday after the presiding officer declared eight votes of the Congress and AAP councillors as “invalid”. With this, BJP's Manoj Sonkar was declared as the new mayor as he received 16 votes, defeating AAP's Kuldeep Singh who got 12 votes.
Following the result, a massive ruckus broke out in the House with the AAP and Congress alleging “electoral malpractices” by the BJP. The two parties also filed a petition in the Punjab-Haryana high court highlighting concerns over the integrity of the elections.
Meanwhile, the presiding officer reacted to the ruckus claiming that AAP and Congress “conspired to derail the election process”.
“There were around 11 ballot papers with which they (AAP) had a problem. I honoured their wish and issued new ballot papers. I declared the result after that. BJP won 16 votes, AAP won 12 votes and the rest of the 8 votes were invalid. After I declared the result the Opposition started disrupting the process and hijacked the ballot papers,” he said.
