Cong candidate as Ulhas mayor — HC

MUMBAI, MAY 3: The Bombay High Court today set aside the election of Shiv Sena backed Independent candidate Kumar Ailani as Mayor of Ulha...

MUMBAI, MAY 3: The Bombay High Court today set aside the election of Shiv Sena backed Independent candidate Kumar Ailani as Mayor of Ulhasnagar and declared Congress candidate Hardas Makhija as the mayor of the town.

A division bench of Justice Ashok Agarwal and Justice D K Deshmukh set aside Ailani’s election while hearing a writ petition filed by Makhija. The Congress candidate had challenged the mayoral election on the ground that the action of presiding officer, the outgoing mayor Yashaswini Naik, was malafide. Naik had cast her vote in favour of Ailani.

The high court also turned down Ailani’s plea to stay its order to enable him to file an appeal observing that granting time would be a matter of indulgence which Ailani was not entitled to.’

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Makhija’s counsels, Ramrao Adik and Arvind Bobde, told the court that the presiding authority had no powers to scrutinise votes and declare any ballot as illegal and that such powers were vested only in the hands of the two scrutineers appointed by Naik.

In the mayoral elections held on April 20, Makhija had secured 34 votes as against 33 obtained by Ailani during counting of votes undertaken by scrutineers and was declared elected as mayor. Later, the presiding officer Yashaswini Naik (Sena) announced that she was declaring a ballot paper which was cast in Makhija’s favour as invalid thereby causing a tie and then gave a casting vote in Ailani’s favour to settle the issue.

Talking to reporters after the high court order today, Makhija said, “Ultimately truth and justice had prevailed.” He informed that his party would be filing a writ petition in the high court challenging the election of Dhananjay Bodare as the Deputy Mayor later this week.

A jubiliant Makhija told Express Newsline, "Since Bodare’s election was carried out when Ailani was presiding it cannot be held valid," and added, "had we not walked out in protest aginst the way the outgoing mayor declared the results Bodare wouldn’t have won." He pointed out that he was saying this since the single vote majority he got was due to cross-voting by the ruling Sena-BJP-Independent combine.

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Meanwhile, Ailani announced that he would go in appeal to the Supreme Court (SC). "We are waiting for a copy of the ruling following which we will approach the SC," he told Express Newsline. He did not comment when asked if the outgoing Sena mayor Yashswini Naik had exceeeded her brief in declaring a ballot paper invalid after the scrutinising officer had found no problem with them.

The Sena camp, which was never in favour of Thackeray’s choice of Ailani as their candidate, is pleased about the ruling. "Compared to Ailani, Makhija has a very clean image so the citizens have lot of expectations from him as a mayor," said a senior Sena corporator.

The BJP leader in the UMC Lal Punjabi said, "We will abide by the HC’s ruling for now but support Ailani’s stand to move the apex court."