AMC polls: BJP candidate declared winner again after recounting of votes

The recounting for votes was held on Saturday at premises of LD College of Engineering in Ahmedabad in which Chavda won by a narrow margin of 664 votes with Mohnani getting 16,992 votes.

State Election Commissioner Sanjay Prasad told The Indian Express, “The recounting of votes only confirms earlier result, where Gitaben Chavda was declared elected. There was no difference in votes after the recounting process ended.”

This retains the number of BJP seats in the 192-seat AMC at 160, with Congress having 24 seats, seven with AIMIM and one independent.

In the results declared first on February 23, 2021, all four seats were shown as having been won by Congress candidates in the Kubernagar ward. However, after Chavda raised objections, the SEC had revised the results and declared her as the winner claiming that votes cast in the ninth round had not been counted. The other three Congress corporators from the ward are two from seats reserved for women-Urmilaben Parmar and Kaminidevi Jha-and Nikulsinh Tomar.

Mohnani said, “My contention was whether it is legal to change the result in such a manner after once the results are declared. After declaring me as winner on February 23,2021, the collector team reached my home at 2.30 am on February 26 and said that I have lost,” he told The Sunday Express.

Chavda, a first time corporator from Kubernagar ward, said, “The legal fight did not hamper my working as a councillor. It was only these last three days when I had to do some running around for legal paperwork as sought by my lawyer” .

The recounting of votes was conducted in ten rounds as per the apex court orders, in the presence of ten counting agents each from Chavda and Mohnani’s sides.

AMC BJP leader Bhaskar Bhatt said, “This is the first time that a municipal election fight has gone up to the Supreme Court. There are instances when results are challenged when there is a low margin of 100-200 votes but such is the first case ”

According to Bhatt, the 2021 elections were also the first time barring one seat BJP had lost to Congress in the Kubernagar ward. In the 2015 elections, Mohnani who had contested as a Congress candidate, had lost by nearly 2000 votes.

Chavda said that after Jagdish Mohnani was declared the winner the first time, she and her team verified at their level and alerted the election officers of the possible error which when rectified she was declared to have won with 664 votes. She has been an active party worker though she did not hold any position. Her husband Vishalsinh runs an auto parts business.

Mohnani had approached the Gujarat High Court, challenging the election officer’s move to revise the decision by declaring Chavda as elected after announcing the results under the provisions of the Bombay Provincial Municipal Corporations (Conduct of Elections) Rules, 1994.

In its submission before the court, the State Election Commission had said that in the 10th and final round of counting instead of taking the cumulative total of the ninth round, the total of the eighth round was added as cumulative base due to a “clerical error”.

When the cumulative of the ninth round was added as a base for the 10th round, the number of votes received by Chavda was higher than that of the Congress candidate, it said.
The Gujarat HC, in an order dated March 8, had refused to interfere in the petition moved by Mohnani.

Mohnani, after being declared the winner in Kubernagar ward, was also issued the certificate of election by the returning officer (RO) Tamanna Zalodiya, Ahmedabad deputy collector, on February 23.

However, it came to the notice of the RO while uploading the data on the server for real-­time monitoring that there was an error in the calculation of votes of the final round.
Subsequently, an order was issued by the returning officer to Mohnani, stating that the results declared was erroneous and that final count of votes held the BJP candidate the winner, thereby revoking the certificate of election granted to Mohnani.

Mohnani had contended that the returning officer did not have the jurisdiction to revoke the already declared result and revise it.

The Gujarat HC had held that this was a case “where there is absolutely no scope for any dispute…this is a case where a mistake committed by the Returning Officer is beyond dispute”.

The Gujarat HC order was challenged by Mohnani before the Supreme Court in May 2021. On April 26 this year, while disposing of the petition, the SC observed that “the appropriate course of action to quell all doubts in the election process would be to have a recount of the votes under the supervision of the State Election Commissioner of the State of Gujarat.”

Adding that the SC has not examined the legal principles laid down in the Gujarat HC judgement, the SC directed that in case BJP’s Chavda “once again emerges as the person with the highest votes, no remedial action would be required” but in case Mohnani “is held to have more votes, the rectification certificate will be issued.”
Inputs from Sohini Ghosh