BJP, Cong slugfest before EC on Rajya Sabha polls

A high powered BJP delegation on Tuesday night urged the Election Commission to declare results of Rajya Sabha polls to Gujarat and reject Congress plea to quash the votes of its two MLAs who switched sides, as the polling process cannot be terminated after the ballot box was closed.

The counting was withheld in Ahmedabad owing to Congress seeking cancellation of votes of  its MLAs --   Bholabhai Gohil and Raghavjibhai Patel  -- on the pretext that they violated provisions by disclosing to the BJP prior to exercising their franchise. The BJP countered the Congress submission by arguing to the EC that the opposition woke up late after panicked foresing defeat of its candidate Ahmed Patel. Of the three seats for which polls took place on Tuesday, BJP president Amit Shah and union minister Smriti Irani are confident of winning the election. But the battle is realy for the third seat where Ahmed Patel, who is political advisor to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is trying to come back to the Upper House for the fifth time.

The delegation led by union minister Arun Jaitley argued Article 324 clearly stated that the polling process can be annuled only by the court on hearing a petition by the aggrieved party challenging the Rajya Sabha polls, senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters outside Nirwachan Sadan. Apart from Jaitley and Prasad, the BJP team that knocked on the doors of the Commission was packed by more union ministers such as Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan and Nirmala Sitharaman.
 
Though Congress leader Ahmad Patel said the Returning Officer did not take cognizance of their complaint, the BJP delegation requested the EC that the opposition move was an afterthought since they did not raise it when the two of their legislators voted at 9.20 in the morning, Goyal stated.  The Congress flagged the matter  only at around 3 pm, Goyal claimed. By that time, the votes were in the ballot box and election rules empowers only Returning Officer to take a call whether the procedure was breached.

Prasad described the Congress allegations as "baseless" and borne out of their "dissapointment as defeat was staring at them".  The Congress too had earlier moved the EC and said the two of its MLAs violated provisions that barred voters from showing their ballot papers to anyone else other than the party's authorised agent. The BJP went to the Commission twice but did not seek cancellation of votes of another Congress MLA as the rumours were.

In the high drama that Gujarat elections for Rajya Sabha witnessed through out Tuesday, the Congress in its memorandum to the EC said they had protested about the matter to the Returning Officer, and asked him to cancel the votes of these two MLA's. The videography of the entire process is available with the Returning Officer and he may be immediately directed to follow the law in letter and spirit, the Congress leaders RPN Singh and Randeep Singh Surjewala said in their memorandum.

Former Union minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram, who took the party delegation for the second time to the Nirwachan Bhavan, impressed upon the EC that it has powers to direct the concerned RO to cancel the votes cast by Gohil and Patel. He cited previous instances of Haryana and Rajasthan where EC had invoked its powers to ensure that the elections were free and fair.