BJP accuses Opposition of violating election protocol, approaches Election Commission

In the midst of a fiercely contested election for Rajya Sabha seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party approached the Election Commission, complaining about three legislators of the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance in Maharashtra, and against two Congress legislators in Haryana of violating election protocol.

A delegation of union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Gajendra Singh Sekhawat, Arjun Meghwal, and Jitendra Singh met the EC after the polling was over, asking the election regulator to examine the issue and demanded that the votes of the Opposition legislators be cancelled.

The BJP in one of its memorandum said that the three MVA MLAs, Congress’s Yashomati Thakur, Jitendra Awhad of NCP and Suhas Kande of Shiv Sena “compromised and vitiated the voting procedure” by displaying their ballot paper to people other than their own party election agents.

In another memorandum, the BJP said that Congress MLAs BB Batra and Kiran Choudhry displayed their ballot papers, too.

“The video cameras though obliquely placed may have captured the broad contours of the violation and objections were filed with the Returning Officer by the BJP election agent and other party agents. The RO, without even considering the facts presented or examining the conduct of election rules 1961 or consulting the ECI observers present on the spot, allowed the votes as legal,” the BJP said in its memorandum. The memorandum also had copies of representations made by the election agents of BJP, JJP and an independent candidate.

In both the memorandums, the BJP referenced the 2017 election of Congress leader Ahmed Patel, who went to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat. In his election, the EC has said that showing the ballot paper to anyone other than their party’s election agent makes a legislator’s vote invalid.

“The Commission, in Ahmed Patel case in 2017, had set down the conditions wherein any vote cast in violation of the election rules would be cancelled whether at the time of voting or counting.