The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday petitioned the Election Commission (EC) against five opposition legislators in Haryana and Maharashtra for allegedly displaying their ballot papers to persons other than their respective party polling agents and demanded the cancellation of their votes.
A BJP delegation comprising Union ministers Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Jitendra Singh and Arjun Ram Meghwal met the EC on Friday after the poll processes were over and sought a probe into the matter and cancellation of the votes.
Elections were held in four states-- Maharashtra, Haryana, Karnataka and Rajasthan -- on Friday to elect 16 members to the Rajya Sabha.
The BJP said Congress legislators in Haryana, BB Batra and Kiran Choudhry, “compromised and vitiated the voting procedure” by “openly displaying their ballot papers” to persons other than their own party election agent. A similar complaint was filed against three MLAs in Maharashtra, Congress’s Yashomati Thakur, NCP’s Jitendra Ahwad and Shiva Sena’s Suhas Kande.
Voters are not allowed to display their ballot slips to people other than the party’s polling agents as per rules and in 2017 when a controversy erupted during the election for seats from Gujarat, the election commission had ruled that such violations would amount to not counting the votes of the candidates who violate the rules.
“The video cameras though obliquely placed may have captured the broad contours of the violation and objections were filed with the Returning Officer by the BJP election agent and other party agents. The RO, without even considering the facts presented or examining the conduct of election rules 1961 or consulting the ECI observers present on the spot, allowed the votes as legal,” the BJP said in its petition to EC.
{{/usCountry}}“The video cameras though obliquely placed may have captured the broad contours of the violation and objections were filed with the Returning Officer by the BJP election agent and other party agents. The RO, without even considering the facts presented or examining the conduct of election rules 1961 or consulting the ECI observers present on the spot, allowed the votes as legal,” the BJP said in its petition to EC.
{{/usCountry}}The party also cited Article 324 of the Constitution of India read with section 66 of the Representation of Peoples Act 1951, rule 39AA of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961.