Earlier, BJP’s Manoj Sonkar was elected as Mayor on January 30 after he bagged 16 votes against the 12 votes received by the Congress-AAP candidate Kumar.
This was despite the fact that the AAP-Congress alliance had a majority in the house with 20 members. Eight votes were rejected in the process as invalid, which constituted votes of the AAP-Congress alliance.
Kuldeep Kumar initially approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court for relief and a probe in the matter, alleging fraud in BJP’s win and forgery in the rejection of the eight votes.
However, the High Court only issued notice and listed the matter for hearing after three weeks but refused to stay the polls.
Kumar then moved the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the operation of the notification issued for the appointment of Sonkar as the Mayor.
During the last hearing, the Supreme Court had taken strong exception to the RO’s conduct after noting that he could clearly be seen defacing the ballot papers on video to influence the election results.
Source: Barandbench
