Ajay Maken to approach court over Kartikeya Sharma's win in RS polls, party says ECI can't have different rules for different people

Congress leader Ajay Maken is set to approach the court seeking invalidation of a vote cast by a Haryana legislator in favour of BJP-backed independent candidate and newly-elected Rajya Sabha member Kartikeya Sharma, saying he had not marked it as per the procedure laid down by the Election Commission of India (ECI).

Sharma defeated Maken in a nail-biting finish in the June 10 Rajya Sabha elections.

Congress leaders said if his vote has been validated by the ECI then same rule should apply to their legislator (read Kiran Choudhry) whose vote was cancelled for not marking it correctly.

The ECI officials while examining the vote of the legislator (either from the Jannayak Janata Party or an independent) had ruled that his intention is clear that he wanted to vote for Sharma.

For the Rajya Sabha elections, there are three horizontal boxes on a ballot paper. The first box has the name of the candidate, second has his or her photo, and the third and the blank one is for marking the vote. A voter has to write or mark "1" in the last box to vote in the elections.

In this case, the above mentioned legislator marked "1" in the box that had Sharma's name.

On the hand, the ECI had rejected Choudhry's vote as she had tick marked Maken's name and not put "1" in the blank box.

"It is not about the intention. It is about the procedure and whoever doesn't follow iit has to face the consequence," said a Congress leader.

"If the intention of the other candidate is clear, so is that of ours. How can you have different parameters or different rules for different people," added the Congress leader.

Maken is likely to be represented by senior lawyer and party colleague Vivek Tankha. He has also been suggested to take the help of former finance minister P Chidambaram in this regard.

Sharma had won by a thin margin and the cancellation of Choudhry's vote proved decisive in his victory.

BJP’s Krishan Lal Panwar got 36 votes while Sharma secured 23 first preference votes and 6.6 votes transferred by the BJP, taking his tally to 29.6.

On the other hand, Maken bagged 29 votes, but lost on account of having failed to secure any second preference votes.

In all, the Congress had 31 legislators. While Choudhry's vote was invalidated, Kuldeep Bishnoi cross-voted in favour of Sharma, insisting that he voted as per his inner conscience.

He has since been expelled from the Congress and the party will also approach the Haryana assembly speaker to seek his disqualification.