Chandigarh, 19 Feb:
In a brand new twist withinside the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation, Manoj Sonkar of the Bharatiya Janata Party resigned as Chandigarh mayor on Sunday night, an afternoon earlier than the Supreme Court is scheduled to pay attention a plea alleging irregularities withinside the lately held mayoral polls. This observed the resignations of 3 Aam Aadmi Party councillors – Punam Devi, Neha Musawat, and Gurcharan Kala – in Chandigarh who had long gone incommunicado 3 days in the past and joined the BJP on Sunday night, citing “unhappiness” with the Arvind Kejriwal-led party.
Manoj Sonkar submitted his resignation to the municipal commissioner, Chandigarh BJP president Jatinder Pal Malhotra said.
“Mayor (Manoj Sonkar) has resigned from his submit today. The be counted of mayoral polls is subjudice; the Supreme Court will determine on it tomorrow,” Malhotra said.
This got here after the Congress and AAP had accused the presiding officer for mayoral elections Anil Masih of defacing poll papers. A video of Masih, purportedly tampering with 8 votes in the course of the counting manner on January 30 had additionally long past viral on social media - which the pinnacle courtroom docket took a stern view of.
According to Masih, in the course of the counting of votes, Manoj Sonkar were given sixteen votes, Kuldeep Dhalor of the AAP-Congress alliance bagged 12 votes, whilst 8 of the full 36 votes had been declared invalid.
On February 5, the Supreme Court had rapped Masih, gazing that it become apparent that he defaced the ballot papers and that he have to be prosecuted, including that his motion amounted to "homicide and mockery" of democracy. The courtroom docket had indexed the problem on February 19.