Chandigarh Mayor Elections: Poll officer Anil Masih tenders unconditional apology before Supreme Court

Former presiding officer of the Chandigarh mayoral polls, Anil Masih, who came under fire for defacing ballot papers, tendered an unconditional apology before the Supreme Court on Friday [Kuldeep Kumar vs UT Chandigarh and ors]..Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi appeared for Masih before a bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra and apologised to the Court. "We have rendered an unconditional apology. I had a long chat with him. He will withdraw the first affidavit and surrender to the magnanimity of this court. This is an unconditional apology," the Senior Counsel told the bench.The matter will be taken up next in the second week of July..The Supreme Court had in February quashed the decision by Masih to declare Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) candidate as winner of Chandigarh Mayor polls, after a video of Masih defacing ballot papers went viral..The Court was hearing a petition filed by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Councillor Kuldeep Kumar who alleged fraud in Returning Officer (RO) Masih's decision of January 30 to declare BJP's Manoj Sonkar (since resigned) as the Chandigarh Mayor.Masih had arrived at this decision after declaring eight votes for the AAP candidate to be invalid. However, CCTV visual had caught him defacing the eight ballot papers. .The Supreme Court had in February quashed the decision by Masih to declare BJP candidate as the winner. The Court while setting aside Masih's decision, had also ruled Kumar to be the winner of the mayoral polls instead.The bench had rejected Masih's explanation on why he had declared the eight votes for AAP candidate to be invalid, and strongly deprecated the conduct of Masih.The Court stated that Masih had "unlawfully altered the course of the mayoral election" and that he had made statement before the Court that was a "patent falsehood."It had, therefore, issued a show-cause notice to Masih. This issue will now be heard in detail in July. .BJP's Manoj Sonkar was declared to have won the Mayor elections on January 30 on the strength of 16 votes against the 12 votes received by the Congress-AAP candidate, Kuldeep Kumar.This was despite the fact that the AAP-Congress alliance had a majority in the house with 20 members. A total of 36 votes were cast of which 8 votes were rejected as invalid during the counting process.AAP councillor Kuldeep Kumar challenged the Mayor poll results initially before the Punjab and Haryana High Court.When the High Court declined to stay the election results, he moved a plea before the Supreme Court.Notably, while the matter was pending before the top court, the BJP candidate (Sonkar) resigned from the post of Mayor and three AAP Councillors defected to the BJP.The Supreme Court had taken note of this development too and had said that it was "distressed" by such "horse-trading.".Senior Advocate Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi appeared for Kuldeep Kumar before the apex court today.