The victory of a BJP candidate as the mayor of Chandigarh has evoked angry reactions from Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal. This was after BJP’s Manoj Sonkar was declared the winner in the mayoral election, which both the Congress and the AAP a fraudulent exercise.
Rahul Gandhi took to S=X, formerly Twitter, to wrote, “It is beyond imagination what the BJP, which can kill democracy in front of the whole world in the Mayor elections, will do to remain in power in Delhi. Years ago, on this day, Godse had assassinated Gandhiji and today Godseists killed his ideals and constitutional values.”
Both the Congress and the AAP had come together for the mayoral elections. The Congress has seven councillors in Chandigarh Municipal Corporation, while Kejriwal’s party has 13. Together they had 20 members in the 35-member corporation. On the other hand, the BJP had 15 councillors and one vote of Chandigarh MP Kirron Kher. However, Sonkar polled 16 votes while the AAP and the Congress decided to boycott the vote alleging election fraud. This was because the presiding officer declared eight votes of the AAP-Congress alliance invalid.
Kejriwal tweeted, “Today, these people were caught red handed during the mayor’s election, this video has surfaced. Who knows how many elections in the country till now, they might have committed such frauds, who knows how many elections they might have won dishonestly like this?”
The Congress and the AAP have decided to fight the next Lok Sabha polls together as part of the INDIA front, both both parties have failed to agree on a seat sharing arrangement in Punjab’s 13 and Delhi’s seven Lok Sabha seats.