Ajay Maken moves HC against Kartikeya Sharma's win

Chandigarh: Senior Congress leader Ajay Maken on Monday moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court, challenging BJP-JJP backed Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma's win in last month's Rajya Sabha polls.

Speaking to reporters outside the high court complex, the Congress leader said a vote cast in favour of Sharma should have been rejected as it was not marked in the column where the preference was supposed to be marked.

As the vote was counted as valid, it had a bearing on the poll result, and therefore, Maken said, he had to file the petition.

Replying to a question, Maken clarified he was challenging Kartikeya Sharma's victory because a vote cast by a ruling combine MLA, which should have been declared invalid, was accepted as valid.

On reports that Congress' Kiran Choudhary's vote was declared invalid, he replied, "It was clear when Kiran Choudhary came out after casting her vote, she herself said that she had put a 'tick mark' against the nominee's name." "We had seen the ballot number on which the tick mark was made and checked it's serial number and therefore, there was no doubt that the rejected vote was that of Kiran Choudhary," said Maken.

The Congress leader also took a veiled dig at All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge of Haryana Vivek Bansal, saying the Congress' authorised polling agent for the Rajya Sabha polls, who was shown every single vote, maintained until last that "we got 30 single preference votes, whereas only 29 single preference votes were cast".

In a jolt to the Congress, BJP's Krishan Lal Panwar and BJP-JJP backed Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma were declared elected last month for the two Rajya Sabha seats from Haryana.

"But one thing is there which is Kiran Choudhary's mistake and our party's authorised agent's mistake at the same time statistically looks improbable. So, they will have to tell who committed a mistake and who did it deliberately because both cannot be at fault at the same time," Maken said.

Congress had 31 MLAs in the 90-member state assembly and the numbers were enough to secure Maken's win. However, party legislator Kuldeep Bishnoi cross-voted while another vote was declared invalid.