Who's to be blamed for Ajay Maken's defeat?

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Ajay Maken has blamed party colleague Kiran Choudhry for his defeat in the June 10 Rajya Sabha elections from Haryana.

Maken, who has also approached the Punjab and Haryana high court challenging the victory of Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma, claims to have enough proof to prove his allegation against Choudhry.

According to Maken, Choudhry was well-versed with the entire voting procedure as this was not the first Rajya Sabha election in which she voted, insinuating that she deliberately invalidated her vote.

Instead of marking "1" under Maken's name and picture as laid down in the procedure, Choudhry tick marked it, resulting in the vote being declared invalid.

In an interview with a TV channel the video of which is available with Newsdrum, Choudhry admitted that she had tick-marked the ballot paper and shown it to the party's in-charge of Haryana and Maken's authorised polling agent Vivek Bansal.

On this, Maken said that two of them need to sit and figure out who committed the mistake - deliberately or otherwise.

"It is statistically improbable to say that both of them committed the mistake," he said.

However, he said Bansal misled him by saying that he had got 30 first preference votes and not 29 since one was rejected.

Bansal claimed that it was a genuine mistake on his part and not intentional as alleged.

As per the details, ballot number 26 was invalidated and through the video recording of the polling process it has been established that it was Choudhry's vote.

The details of the timing of voting by legislators and their order of ballot numbers are also with NewsDrum and in that too the name of Choudhry is listed at serial number 26.

Choudhry has so far rubbished all such allegations. “I sympathise with Maken as he has lost a number of elections. My leader Sonia Gandhi knows what I am capable of doing. It is a conspiracy to blame me," she said.

Maken's claim has given a fresh handle to former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda to attack Choudhry, his arch-rival in the Haryana Congress. He has urged the Congress high command to take strict action in this case.

The party has already expelled Adampur legislator Kuldeep Bishnoi who cross-voted in favour of Sharma. He has since met top BJP leadership in an indication that he will join the saffron party soon. However, Hooda insisted that he, as the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader, will not expel him and maintained that he should resign and contest a fresh election.

That said, Maken's aides claim that they have got irrefutable proof against Choudhry and are waiting for her to accept her fault before making it public. Indeed, the fight in the Haryana Congress has just begun. Watch this space for further developments in this matter.