After Supreme Court declared INDIA alliance candidate Kuldeep Kumar new Chandigarh mayoral elections winner, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said that presiding officer Anil Masih was just a ‘pawn’ and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was behind the BJP’s conspiracy.
“Masih is just a ‘pawn’ in the BJP’s conspiracy to murder democracy, Modi is the face behind it,” Gandhi wrote on ‘X’.
His remarks came after Supreme Court slammed Masih for defacing eight ballots of the Opposition members and declare BJP candidate as winner of the Chandigarh mayoral elections.
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The court quashed the results and ordered re-counting of votes, which resulted in the victory of the AAP candidate.
The top court noted that the eight ballots on which the presiding officer Anil Masih had made a marking and declared invalid were validly cast in favour of INDIA alliance candidate.
A bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud said that the presiding officer must be held accountable for unlawfully altering the course of the election and making false statement before the court.
“The conduct of the presiding officer has to be deprecated at two levels. Firstly, by his conduct, he has unlawfully altered the course of the Mayoral election. Secondly, making a solemn statement before this court on February 19, 2024, the presiding officer has expressed a patent falsehood for which he must be held accountable,” the bench said.
Reacting to the court’s judgment, Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that public will now stop Modi’s hunger for power.
“This gentleman who goes abroad and talks big about the ‘Mother of Democracy’, it his pawn who has murdered democracy in front of the camera. Today the Supreme Court has stopped the ‘Murder of Democracy’ in India. Now the public will stop Modi’s hunger for power,” Ramesh said.
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