"Historic, path-breaking": Congress' Manish Tewari praises Chandigarh MC decision to hold open vote for 2025 election

"Yesterday the General House of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation took a historic path-breaking decision that the next elections for the Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor and deputy Mayor of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation will be held by a show of hands rather than through secret ballot to ensure that there is full transparency and fairness in the electoral process," he told ANI.

The Municipal Corporation passed the resolution on Tuesday to conduct voting by a "show of hands" instead of the previous practice of secret ballot, with AAP's Kuldeep Kumar presiding over as mayor.

Saying that there was a complete subversion of democracy in the previous Chandigarh mayoral elections, he added, "Last year, there was absolutely a complete subversion of democracy in the elections for the Mayor of Chandigarh. The results were gerrymandered with. It necessitated the intervention of SC."

"For the first time in the history of democratic India, the counting of votes took place in the presence of SC presided over by CJI and in a path-breaking judgment he struck down the results of the mayor elections and declared the Congress AAP candidate as the mayor."

On February 20, 2024, a division bench of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud declared Kuldeep Kumar, the Aam Aadmi Party candidate as the winner of the mayoral elections.

The Supreme Court had found that the then Returning Officer, Anil Masih had on January 30 deliberately defaced eight ballots that were cast in favour of Kuldeep Kumar so as to make them invalid.

"The eight votes which were treated as invalid by making those markings... counting the eight votes for the petitioner (AAP candidate Kumar) will make him have 20 votes. We direct that the election result by the Returning Officer is quashed. The petitioner is declared to be the winner of the Chandigarh mayoral polls," the bench had said in its order. (ANI)