Three councilors of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in the national capital on Sunday evening.
The three Chandigarh councilors of the Aam Aadmi Party who have joined the BJP are Punam Devi, Neha Musawat and Gurcharan Kala in the presence of the party's National General Secretary Vinod Tawde in Delhi.
National General Secretary Vinod Tawde said Chandigarh councilors had joined the party as they were unhappy with the treatment meted out to them in AAP.
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“Chandigarh councilors Punam Devi, Neha Musawat and Gurcharan Kala joined the BJP today. They are not satisfied with their party's behavior towards them. The BJP will respect them and they will help in the development of Chandigarh,” Vinod Tawde told ANI.
Neha Musawat, who joined the BJP, alleged that the AAP party had made false promises to us.
“Today, I took inspiration from Prime Minister Modi's work and joined BJP,” Musawat said.
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Meanwhile, Punam Devi, who joined the BJP, said she joined the BJP after being inspired by Prime Minister Modi's work.
“I joined BJP after getting inspired by PM Modi's work… I left AAP because they are a fake party,” Devi said.
The third councilor to join the BJP, Gurcharan Kala, said, “I belonged to the BJP and I will remain with the BJP too… I joined the party after being inspired by the work of Prime Minister Modi .”
Ahead of the Supreme Court hearing on allegations of irregularities in counting of votes, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Manoj Sonkar resigned as mayor of Chandigarh on Sunday.
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The case regarding the mayoral elections will be presented to the Supreme Court on February 19.
Earlier on February 5, the Supreme Court came down heavily on the Returning Officer who conducted the Chandigarh mayoral elections, saying he was “murdering democracy” and ordered preservation of the entire record of the election process, including ballot papers, videography and other materials. , through the Registrar General of Punjab and the High Court of Haryana.
A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said it is clear that the returning officer had damaged the ballot papers.
“Is this the way he is running the elections? This is a mockery of democracy. This is the murder of democracy. We are shocked. We will not allow democracy to be killed in this way. The man makes ballots unreadable as soon as he sees a cross at the bottom. This man must be prosecuted. Is this the behavior of the returning officer?”
The top court also took note of a petition filed by Aam Aadmi Party councilor Kuldeep Dhalor, who had lost the January 30 mayoral election to Bharatiya Janata Party's Manoj Sonkar.
BJP's Sonkar secured 16 votes against the 12 votes received by Kumar despite having 20 councillors. The move of rejecting eight votes of the AAP-Congress alliance as invalid had raised allegations of vote tampering. (ANI)
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Published: Feb 19, 2024 08:30 IST