Agency
New Delhi: The Election Commission on Tuesday night rejected the votes cast by two Congress MLAs who showed their ballots to BJP chief Amit Shah before casting them in violation of rules, and gave the go ahead for counting of votes in the controversy-ridden Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls.
The poll panel passed the order after viewing the video recording of the voting process, saying two electors– Bholabhai Gohil and Raghavjibhai Patel–had “violated the voting procedure and secrecy of ballots.”
The usually quiet polls for the upper chamber of Parliament turned acrimonious and chaotic after the Congress approached the Election Commission demanding cancellation of the votes of Gohil and Patel for having shown the ballots to people other than the party’s authorised representatives.
Three delegations each of the Congress and BJP made a dash for ‘Nirvachan Sadan’, the EC headquarters, within a span of two hours, with the former demanding that the votes of Gohil and Patel be declared invalid, and the latter insisting that counting be taken up “immediately”.
The poll panel, finally, accepted the Congress’s contention and asked the returning officer to reject the votes of its two MLAs and proceed with the counting.
That the contest for three Rajya Sabha seats would go down to the wire had become clear the very day when Balwantsinh Rajput, the Congress chief whip in the state Assembly until a few days ago, defected to the BJP and was fielded to take on Ahmed Patel, the high-profile political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Today, hours after the votes had been cast, Congress took the issue of alleged impropriety by its MLAs to the EC, setting off dramatic developments as delegation after delegation of the two parties made a beeline for the Nirvachan Sadan.
Congress leaders Randeep Surjewala and RPN Singh also produced a video of the poll proceedings to the commission and demanded that votes of Bholabhai Gohil and Raghavjibhai Patel be cancelled as per law since they violated the “secrecy of ballot”.
According to the rules, voters for the Rajya Sabha elections have to show their ballots to authorised representative of their respective parties before casting them.
Terming Congress’ objections as “baseless”, a delegation of BJP leaders, including Union ministers Arun Jaitley, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Piyush Goyal, approached the EC demanding immediate counting of votes, contending that validity of votes once put in ballot boxes cannot be questioned.
Prasad said the Congress was acting out of fear of losing the poll, in which its senior leader Ahmed Patel is locked in a tight fight with a Congress rebel fielded by the BJP.
Immediately, after the visit of the high-profile BJP team, Congress heavyweight P Chidambaram led another delegation to the EC.
After the meeting, Chidambarm told reporters,”If the BJP is so confident of winning the election then it must abide by the law. And the law is very clear. If the ballot is seen by a person other than the authorised person then it is liable to be rejected. BJP was beneficiary of this law on June 11, 2016.
