Haryana Rajya Sabha polls: Cong MLA Kiran Choudhry’s vote was rejected for ‘wrongly casting ballot paper’

Party sources told The Indian Express that she had filled the ballot paper “wrong” due to which her vote was rejected and Congress’ number game got disrupted, eventually leading to Maken’s loss.

“Every MLA was supposed to mark their first, second or third preference by way of marking the numerical 1, 2 or 3 against the names of three candidates written on the ballot paper. Instead of marking her preference by numerical 1, she inserted a ‘tick mark’ against the nominee’s name. It was a gross mistake and was not at all expected from a veteran and seasoned politician like her. Her vote had to be rejected. I am surprised how a veteran politician of her stature could do such a mistake. It is nothing but deliberate,” a senior Congress leader told The Indian Express.

Choudhry, however, rejected the allegations. “It is absolutely rubbish. What do they mean to say that I do not know how to cast my ballot paper? I showed my vote to party observer Vivek Bansal also. What do they mean to say that I don’t understand the difference between numeric and a tick mark? I am going to take them to the cleaners. This is bizarre. I had cast my ballot paper, perfectly according to the norms,” Choudhry told The Indian Express.

Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader, former chief minister and leader of opposition in the Vidhan Sabha, Bhupinder Singh Hooda said, “What can I say at this stage? I have yet not met our election agents who were inside the polling station. Once I meet them, only then can I say what went wrong. As of now, it is clear that Kuldeep Bishnoi did not vote for our nominee and one vote was rejected. I am not aware whose vote has been rejected. That damaged our number game. Had this vote not been rejected, we could have won.”

Talking about Bishnoi, Hooda said, “We were as such not counting him. It was known that he would go against the party. But, we still had 30. Yet, we lost.”

Another senior Congress MLA told The Indian Express, “Vidhan Sabha had sent a detailed four-page circular by email to each of the 90 MLAs on June 3. It elaborated all the dos and don’ts, how to cast the ballot, how to mark your preference, what all you don’t need to do etc. She [Kiran Choudhry] should have at least opened her email and read that circular, if she did not want to be part of the training session that we held for our MLAs to avoid such a fiasco.”

After the Rajya Sabha polling results, Congress MLAs are up in arms against both Bishnoi and Choudhry.

“Party needs to introspect and take substantial and deterring decisions. If a bunch of 31 MLAs cannot stay together, we should realise the state of mess we are in. Had Rahul Gandhi given time to Bishnoi and given a pat on his back, he [Bishnoi] might have got pacified and voted for the party. But it did not happen. It appears that Bishnoi has already made up his mind to switch to BJP. Even if he does not quit Congress, the party should take a strong decision and a lesson needs to be taught to such back-stabbers,” another senior Congress MLA said.

Kiran Choudhry and B B Batra were the two Congress MLAs whose votes had come under cloud during the polling. While Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma and BJP’s Krishan Panwar had sought disqualification of both the votes on the ground of “breach of secrecy of the ballot paper”, Congress nominee Ajay Maken had refuted their objections and appealed to the Chief Election Commission to hold both the votes “valid”.

Although the chief election commissioner rejected BJP and Sharma’s objections and gave a go ahead for counting of votes polled, Choudhry’s vote was rejected because of not following the prescribed norms.

Yesterday, Choudhry had told The Indian Express, “There was a disruption created by Digvijay Chautala [JJP’s election observer and Haryana deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala’s younger brother]. These people (EC) had created extremely shoddy and thin cardboard sheets as partitions. I had only shown my vote to our observer. He (Digvijay) was sitting in the next partition and claimed that he saw my vote or I showed it to him. He demanded that my vote be disqualified. But I told the EC that it is ridiculous.”

“What kind of partitions have you made? Unless I sit in the observer’s lap and show him my vote, the person who is sitting in the next cubicle can easily get out of his chair and see the vote. That’s what he (Digvijay) did. He stood out of his chair and started creating ruckus. But I went ahead and polled my vote,” Choudhry had said.