Chandigarh: The counting of the votes for the two Rajya Sabha seats in Haryana could not begin till late Friday night after the votes of two Congress MLAs –Kiran Choudhry and B B Batra - came under cloud for allegedly flouting the secrecy norms during voting.
The BJP which approached the election commission (EC) sought the cancellation of their votes while the opposition nominee, Ajay Maken, wrote to the EC alleging the ruling party’s objection of code violation be quashed as it was false and was filed to avoid defeat.
The counting of the votes which was scheduled to start at 5 pm was on hold till the time of filing this report.
While the BJP in its complaint to the EC said that the two Congress legislators violated the conduct of election rules, a party delegation, comprising Union ministers Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Gajendra Shekhawat, besides others also called on EC in New Delhi.
Congress’ Maken also sent a written representation to the EC saying that the allegations of violation of the conduct of election rules by the BJP were false and frivolous as there was no breach of secrecy or privacy on part of the two Congress MLAs and that it was only to avoid its defeat.
Earlier in the day while speaking on the issue, Congress MLA Kiran Choudhary said that the BJP's ally Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) leader Digvijay Chautala, who was the authorised agent of Kartikeya Sharma, tried to look into her ballot paper when she was showing it to the Congress authorised agent, Vivek Bansal.
For the record, in the House of 90 members, 89 MLAs voted for the RS candidates as the independent MLA Balraj Kundu (Meham seat) abstained from voting. The BJP has 40 MLAs, Congress 31, BJP's ally JJP has 10 MLA and there are 7 independent MLAs.
BJP candidate Krishan Lal Panwar, Congress nominee Ajay Maken and BJP-JJP backed independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma were in the fray for the two RS seats from Haryana.
While Panwar’s win was obvious, the BJP-JJP combine candidate Sharma with the help of independents and the lone Indian National Lok Dal MLA Abhay Chautala and Haryana Lokhit Party MLA Gopal Kanda had also extended support was trying to upset the prospects of Congress candidate Maken.
It is pertinent to mention here that Kartikeya Sharma is the son of former Union minister Venod Sharma and younger brother of Manu Sharma, who was convicted in the infamous Jessica Lal murder case. Venod Sharma had been a minister in the erstwhile Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led government though he had later floated his own outfit, the Jan Chetna Party.
