Asked by the party to submit a report, Congress’s election agent Vivek Bansal said he has zeroed in on three to four MLAs and will identify the person soon. (Image: Facebook)The Congress high command has sought a report from the party’s Haryana in-charge Vivek Bansal, who was also its authorised election agent during the Rajya Sabha polls held on June 10, to “identify” the MLA who cast the ballot paper “wrongly”. The wrongly filled ballot paper and cross-voting by Congress’s Adampur MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi led to the defeat of party nominee Ajay Maken in the election.
Asked if he has identified the MLA, Bansal said, “I have zeroed in on three-four of them and shall soon be able to identify the one”.
BJP’s nominee Krishan Panwar and Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma, who was also backed by the JJP, INLD, Haryana Lokhit Party (HLP) and Independent MLAs, made it to the Rajya Sabha after what turned out to be a nail-biting three-cornered contest. Maken lost to Kartikeya Sharma by 2/3rd of one vote in the tightly fought contest. In terms of final scoring, calculated on the basis of first and second preference votes, while Sharma scored 29.66, Maken got 29.00 and Krishan Panwar 29.34.
Bansal, who was present inside the polling station and was authorised by the party to check the vote cast by each Congress MLA, has been asked to submit a report on the second party MLA who filed the ballot paper wrongly, leading to the rejection of a Congress vote and eventually sealed Maken’s fate. Talking to The Indian Express, Bansal said, “There is a way to identify the MLA who filled his/her ballot paper wrongly. I am refreshing my memory. The party high command has sought a report from me and in two-three days, I shall be submitting it”.
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Congress Legislative Party leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda said, “The party is analysing the election results in detail. We are carrying out scrutiny to identify which Congress MLA’s vote was cancelled. The counting agent of Congress knows the ballot number of that MLA.”
A day after Maken’s defeat, Congress president Sonia Gandhi expelled Kuldeep Bishnoi from all party positions, including the post of special invitee of the Congress Working Committee, with immediate effect. The party high command, sources said, is expected to take a similar action against the second MLA.
A four-time MLA and two-time Lok Sabha MP, Bishnoi had been dropping hints of joining the rival BJP. “BJP welcomes him (Kuldeep Bishnoi),” Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had said. Congratulating the two winners of the Rajya Sabha polls, Khattar said, “He (Bishnoi) heard his inner soul voice. He must have done this only after being impressed by the policies of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and his government”.
Kuldeep Bishnoi’s shilly-shallying with the Congress and BJP is hardly new. Ahead of the Haryana Assembly polls in 2014, Bishnoi had said the BJP was “not a trustworthy partner” while ending his ties with the party and joining hands with Venod Sharma’s Jan Chetna party. At that time too, Bishnoi had said that the BJP promised to make him the chief minister before backing out. Two years later, he dumped Venod Sharma too and merged his Haryana Janhit Congress with the Indian National Congress.
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Speaking about how Bishnoi’s exit will impact the Congress in Haryana, Bansal said: “I have always maintained that anybody’s entry and exit from the party definitely impacts us, our only endeavour shall be as to how we can minimise that impact”.
Soon after Maken’s loss in the Rajya Sabha polls, the party high command turned the heat up on state unit leaders who were at the helm of affairs. Despite having adequate numbers, the Congress lost the Upper House seat to an Independent who made a last-minute entry into the fray and got the backing of the ruling BJP-JJP coalition. The blame game began soon after the results were announced, with party MLAs accusing each other of wrongly filling the ballot paper. Several Congress MLAs told The Indian Express that they would urge the party high command to take “deterrent action” against the defectors.
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