Chandigarh: Senior Aam Aadmi Party leaders exploded Tuesday after the Bharatiya Janata Party cantered to a surprisingly comfortable win in the Chandigarh mayoral election. Party boss Arvind Kejriwal accused the BJP of “dishonesty”, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said democracy had been “looted”, and Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha labelled the poll results “an act of treason (desh droh)”.
The BJP’s Manoj Sonkar was elected Mayor after winning 16 of a possible 36 votes. The AAP’s Kuldeep Kumar was second with 12. Eight were deemed “invalid” and are at the heart of a row, with the AAP accusing presiding officer Anil Masih – a member of the BJP’s Minority Cell – of invalidating ballots.
Physical confrontations and a crying AAP candidate followed the poll results.
In one video, shared by news agency ANI, Congress and AAP councillors were seen pushing and shoving their BJP counterparts as they tried to gather around Mr Masih to celebrate their win.
Speaking to reporters after the results, Mr Kejriwal drew parallels to former United States President Donald Trump – who contested the transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election, claiming his rivals had rigged votes – and claimed the BJP would similarly subvert the democratic process to retain power.
“Today’s election showed to what lengths they (the BJP) can go to win an election. I think they will do anything… falsify voter lists, falsify votes, capture EVM (electronic voting machines)… I was also thinking that, by grace of God, if INDIA wins then, like Trump, they won’t leave their seats…”
“They (the BJP) will be stuck to their seats… there may be martial law, but they won’t give up power.”
Earlier Mr Kejriwal posted on X, “The manner in which dishonesty has been done in broad daylight in the Chandigarh mayor elections is extremely worrying. If these people can stoop so low in a mayor’s election, then they can go to any extent in the country’s elections. This is very worrying…”
चंडीगढ़ मेयर चुनाव में दिन दहाड़े जिस तरह से बेईमानी की गई है, वो बेहद चिंताजनक है। यदि एक मेयर चुनाव में ये लोग इतना गिर सकते हैं तो देश के चुनाव में तो ये किसी भी हद तक जा सकते हैं। ये बेहद चिंताजनक है।
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) January 30, 2024
Mr Mann, meanwhile, ripped into Mr Masih, calling him a “spineless” person. The Chief Minister also referred to the postponement of the polls due to a medical problem for Mr Masih.
“On January 18 he said he had a problem in his spine… so he couldn’t come… he was right. Actually, he doesn’t even have a spine. He is spineless. If he had, he would have counted votes properly…”
Addressing reporters after the results, Raghav Chadha claimed that all eight votes declared “invalid” by Mr Masih had been for his party’s candidate. Had those votes counted, the AAP would have won.
“This is an act of treason (desh droh). Our eight votes declared (invalid)… not one vote of BJP was declared invalid,” he said, “When a vote is declared invalid, the Presiding Officer has to show agents of all parties (the ballot paper). But today this didn’t happen…” the AAP Rajya Sabha MP said.
“… neither the election agent nor Deputy Commissioner was shown the ballot paper before it was declared invalid. If they can do this for mayoral polls, imagine what they can do in Lok Sabha polls.”
“Does the BJP want to turn India into North Korea?” he continued, demanding Mr Masih be arrested.
The BJP, meanwhile, has simply responded with congratulatory tweet for its Chandigarh unit.
Party boss JP Nadda posted, “Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modiji, union territories have witnessed record development. That the INDI Alliance fought their first electoral battle, and still lost to BJP, shows neither their arithmetic is working nor their chemistry.”
The goal of the INDIA bloc, which aims to bring the opposition together to defeat the BJP in the Lok Sabha election, was for the Chandigarh election to be a historic first victory. Prior to comparable negotiations for the general election, it was also intended to settle disputes over seat sharing amongst the members of INDIA.
In particular, an understanding was reached for this election between the AAP and the Congress, which have so far found it difficult to persuade their state units to cooperate or to share Punjab’s thirteen and Delhi’s seven seats. The AAP was to run for mayor, while the Congress was to fight for the two deputy positions.
The AAP and Congress council members were instructed to vote for one another in each case, guaranteeing a maximum of 20 votes and an easy victory in this election. But things haven’t turned out that way.
The opposition party, which was already in danger of disintegrating when two of its most influential members—Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United)—left, has ultimately become even more vulnerable as a result of the defeat. In the latter instance, things deteriorated after Nitish joined the BJP.
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