Decode Politics: Why Anand Sharma request to vote via postal ballot was denied

What was Anand Sharma’s request?

The Congress leader and former Union minister asked the CEO to allow him to cast his vote from Dharamshala as he was in the midst of the election campaign for the Kangra Lok Sabha seat.

Sharma is enrolled as an elector in Shimla, which is about 250 km from Dharamshala. He argued that he had a right to cast his vote as well as contest the polls. After his request was denied, he told PTI that he would challenge the decision in the Supreme Court.

Why was the request denied?

The CEO told Sharma that he would not be allowed to use the postal ballot facility as the rules allowed only select categories of voters such as those in the central services, under preventive detention or on election duty to avail the option. Under Section 27 of the rules, this list has been expanded to include those with benchmark disability, senior citizens of 85 years and above, and those infected or suspected to have Covid-19.

There is no provision to allow candidates to cast their votes using postal ballots.

Candidates tend to be present in the constituency they are contesting from on polling day, making rounds of the booths and interacting with party workers. For instance, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi voted in Delhi on May 25, but was seen visiting booths in Rae Bareli, one of the two seats he contested this time, during polling on May 20. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who contests from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, voted in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

What has the Supreme Court said?

In a recent case, the Supreme Court dismissed a 78-year-old woman’s plea to be allowed to vote using postal ballots due to ill health. The petitioner, a voter from Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh, Sarla Srivastav, had argued that it was her Constitutional right to vote via postal ballot. Hearing her appeal against the Chhattisgarh High Court’s order, the Supreme Court dismissed the petition on May 20. “We are not inclined to interfere with the impugned order passed by the High Court, which is interim in nature,” the court ruled.

The Returning Officer of the constituency had said the petitioner did not fall into any of the special category of voters who were eligible to cast their vote via postal ballot.

What is the ground situation in Kangra from where Anand Sharma is contesting?

Kangra is the most populous among Himachal’s four Lok Sabha constituencies which are going to polls in the seventh and final phase on June 1.

In the 2022 state Assembly elections clinched by the Congress, the party had won 12 of 17 Assembly seats that fall in the Kangra parliamentary constituency.

But one of its MLAs, Sudhir Sharma from the Dharamsala seat, revolted early this year and cross-voted against the party’s Rajya Sabha poll candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who lost to the BJP’s Harsh Mahajan. Later, Sharma along with five other rebel Congress MLAs was disqualified for disobeying the party whip. All of them later joined the BJP, which also gave them tickets for the by-elections in their seats, which will also take place on June 1.

Sharma’s campaign is centred on the Congress’s plank against “threat to the Constitution”, unemployment, Agniveer and the BJP’s “failure” in creating 2 crore jobs every year.

Kangra has been a BJP bastion, having elected the BJP MPs over the last three elections. The BJP has fielded senior leader Rajeev Bhardwaj from the seat this time, replacing incumbent MP Kisan Kapoor.