Congress sends show cause notice to Kiran Choudhry over her invalid vote; Maken hands over proof to leadership

New Delhi: The Congress has issued a show cause notice to its Haryana leader Kiran Choudhry who many of her colleagues alleged had deliberately invalidated her vote in the June 10 Rajya Sabha elections from the state, resulting in the defeat of senior leader Ajay Maken against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-backed independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma.

Congress general secretary in-charge of organisation KC Venugopal has issued the notice to Choudhry after Maken blamed her for his defeat and asked her to reply as soon as possible.

Maken, who had also approached the Punjab and Haryana high court challenging Sharma’s victory, has handed over to the party leadership some proof to prove his allegation against Choudhry.

The Congress high command was also under tremendous pressure from its Haryana legislators and leaders to act against Choudhry and party’s state in-charge and polling agent Vivek Bansal as well. They had demanded the sacking of the two for betraying the party.

Both Bansal and Choudhry were also not invited to the ‘chintan shivir (brainstorming session)’ organised by the Haryana Congress at Panchkula on August 1 to discuss the strategy to reach out to the people over several burning issues, including inflation, unemployment, and law and order.

Issues related to farmers, Dalits, backward classes and the state’s economic condition were also discussed.

Besides Kumari Selja and Randeep Singh Surjewala were also conspicuous by their absence at the meet.

Legislators such as Niraj Sharma and Kuldeep Vats had accused both Bansal and Choudhry of conspiring against Maken. He claimed that Bansal was given proper training by senior leader Shaktisinh Gohil about how to check the vote of legislators and despite that he allowed Choudhry to invalidate her ballot paper.

Maken had stated that 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.

Choudhry had admitted that she had tick marked the ballot paper and shown it to Bansal.

While there is a big question mark on Bansal’s continuation on the party post, all eyes are on Choudhry to see whether she replies to the notice or opts for an exit route.