Rajasthan: Board chori? High court to the rescue

The BJP beat the Congress in the recent Rajasthan civic polls by just 0.94 per cent of vote share, as recorded by the Rajasthan State Election Commission. The BJP won 4,179 of roughly 10,000 wards, compared with 3,613 for the Congress and 2,273 for Independents. The RLP won 63 wards, AAP 42, CPI(M) 38 and BSP 19.

Among 309 urban local bodies, the BJP emerged as the largest party in 148, against 104 for the Congress;10 bodies ended in a tie. Independents, who secured an impressive 27 per cent of the vote, emerged as king-makers in several bodies, playing a decisive role in the election of mayors, municipal chairpersons and boards.

The BJP wrested control of six of the 10 major cities where mayoral elections had been decided. In Jaipur, Jodhpur and Kota, mayoral elections were delayed amid disputes over procedure and counting. The Congress, meanwhile, won the mayoral election in Bikaner.

Even as candidates rejoiced in their victories, a slanging match broke out between chief minister Bhajan Lal Sharma and his predecessor Ashok Gehlot. A visibly upset Gehlot told media that he had always believed Sharma to be a good, honest person — he never imagined such a bhala, seedha man could stoop to such lows to win.

Sharma advised Gehlot to mind his own business, and leave off on the lectures.

Gehlot’s allegation, however, was nothing short of sensational: elected councillors were offered up to Rs 2 crore each to shift their allegiances. This was, he alleged, a first for Rajasthan, as was the deployment of police and bureaucrats to brazenly intimidate elected councillors and engineer results in favour of the ruling party.

An independent councillor in Hanumangarh was arrested in an old, trumped-up case soon after his victory. Elected Congress councillors were served police notices for alleged municipal-law violations. Businessmen and traders were threatened with action. Councillors booked in fabricated cases — all attempts to browbeat them into switching sides.

In another incident, Congress councillors — on their way back from Himachal Pradesh to cast their votes in Tijara — were intercepted in Panchkula by Haryana Police. The police used photographs to identify the councillors and separate them from accompanying party workers. This was no random police check, it was a planned and targeted operation. Such interference, Gehlot averred, could not have occurred without the knowledge and consent of the chief minister.

Dramatic videos shared by Congress workers captured the ‘rescue’. After the councillors called party workers to say they were being whisked away, Congress workers stopped the bus on the highway. The councillors were seen scrambling out through the windows before being escorted to Tijara in Alwar district, where they voted to form the board.

The episode added to the vitiation of civic polls through arbitrary delimitation of wards before the election and threats and intimidation during polling in Mathania, Paota, Kuchera, Ganganagar, Nimbahera, Alwar and Hanumangarh, among other places.

The scale of incidents prompted K.C. Venugopal, Congress general-secretary (organisation), to rush to Jaipur and take stock of the situation. He warned police officers and bureaucrats that they would be held accountable for their indiscreet and reckless actions.

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In yet another first, the Rajasthan High Court had to step in to secure the liberty of elected councillors and ensure they could cast their votes in mayoral and board elections. On Sunday, 20 September — a court holiday — at least 10 election-related petitions were heard by benches in Jaipur and Jodhpur. New Chief Justice Sanjay Kumar Agarwal ordered the registrar to open the court for urgent petitions.

“In civic elections, the intervention of the high court on a Sunday and orders being passed after midnight is unprecedented,” said Ghanshyam Singh Rathor, a former chairman of the Rajasthan Bar Council.

In Jodhpur, Justice Nupur Bhati heard a string of pleas; in Jaipur, Justices Anup Kumar Dhand, Kuldeep Mathur and Sunil Beniwal heard petitions late into the night. Most petitions sought interim protection from coercive police or state action, relief from administrative bias and high-handedness and more time to cast their votes. Most petitioners were from the Congress or independent candidates who had just been elected councillors.

In Kuchera, the stay on coercive police action enabled the Congress’s Tejpal Mirdha to win the post of chairperson. In Bikaner, elected Congress councillor Maqsood Ahmed received similar relief. In Hanumangarh, Congress councillor Manju Ranwa also received interim protection; she went on to win the chairperson’s post. Protection for nine other elected councillors from Hanumangarh thwarted the BJP’s bid to seize the board.

In Srivijaynagar, the court went further. Justices Nupur Bhati and Baljinder Singh Sandhu ordered the SP to ensure that councillor Vijay Kumar — who had been abducted — be recovered and produced for voting. Two other councillors who were arrested by the police were likewise ordered to be produced and permitted to vote. In Kekri and Tijara, the court’s intervention paved the way for Congress candidates Anil Mittal and Ramavtar Saini to win respective chairperson’s posts.

Advocate Amrit Surolia credited the court’s swift intervention with rescuing the democratic process as the voting window narrowed. Holding an IPS officer, an SP, personally responsible for the recovery of an abducted councillor was historic.

Lawyers called for a high-level inquiry into the role of the Haryana Police, arguing that the detention of Rajasthan councillors could not have occurred without coordination at senior levels in both states. Word had it that 36 independent councillors in Bharatpur, the CM’s home district bordering Uttar Pradesh, were intimidated by UP Police into backing a BJP-supported chairperson candidate. They demanded that officers conspiring to hijack the election be identified and suspended.

Retired DGP Sunil Mehrotra acknowledged that establishing the complicity of senior IPS and IAS officers in abductions, detentions and coercion would be difficult. But, he said, if officers had succumbed to political pressure, it was a matter of regret and concern.