BJP’s Manoj Sonkar was declared to have won the Mayor elections on January 30 on the strength of 16 votes against the 12 votes received by the Congress-AAP candidate, Kuldeep Kumar.
This was despite the fact that the AAP-Congress alliance had a majority in the house with 20 members. A total of 36 votes were cast of which 8 votes were rejected as invalid during the counting process.
AAP councillor Kuldeep Kumar challenged the Mayor poll results initially before the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
When the High Court declined to stay the election results, he moved a plea before the Supreme Court.
Notably, while the matter was pending before the top court, the BJP candidate (Sonkar) resigned from the post of Mayor and three AAP Councillors defected to the BJP.
The Supreme Court had taken note of this development too and had said that it was “distressed” by such “horse-trading.”
Source: Barandbench
