New Delhi: The Delhi Police have registered a case on allegations of forgery and cheating during the counting process of the Bar Council of Delhi elections.
The matter came to the police’s notice when election officials with the Bar Council of Delhi and candidates discovered that ballot papers were being allegedly forged to benefit a specific candidate.
DCP (New Delhi) Sachin Sharma told ThePrint that a First Information Report (FIR) has been registered in connection with the matter, naming counting staff Nikhil Kumar as accused.
The FIR was registered Wednesday at Tilak Marg Police Station under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections 318(4) (cheating), 336(3) (forgery), 340(2) (fraudulent or dishonest use of a forged document or electronic record, knowing or believing it to be forged), 61(2) (criminal conspiracy). “We are looking into the matter, an investigation is underway,” he said.
The complainant, Bar Council of Delhi Secretary Arun Sharma said in the FIR that the Bar Council of Delhi, a statutory body constituted under the Advocates Act 1961, is in the process of elections for the post of 23 members, which were held from 21-23 February this year. The counting of the elections was taking place on the seventh floor, S-Block, High Court of Delhi, it said.
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‘Forgery’ in ballot papers
Sharma said a total number of 221 candidates had taken part in the elections. The counting started on 7 March, and is continuing till date. The process of counting in the Bar Council of Delhi elections is by way of a preferential system. After the counting of first preference votes was over, the candidates who got the least votes were eliminated one by one.
The elimination process started on 13 April. On 15 April, however, at around 11.30 am, during the elimination of the 80th candidate—Syed Mohd Arif, ballot No. 17—”it was found that there are many ballots in which the next best preference, or second preference, has been manipulated and fresh second preference has been written in favour of ballot No. 132, Vishnu Sharma, Advocate”, Sharma said in the FIR.
He alleged that this sequence has been repeated in many ballots by putting digit ‘1’ in front of the digit ‘2’, and making it appear as ’12’, and thereafter marking digit ‘2’ in front of ballot No. 132, thereby causing wrongful loss to the candidate, in whose favour the second preference was actually exercised by the voter.
The manipulation caused wrongful gain to Ballot No. 132, Vishnu Sharma, “in whose favour manipulation, fabrication, forgery has been done on the ballot papers, which are valuable security, creating a vested right in getting elected as Member of the Bar Council of Delhi”, Sharma added.
He further said that the Election Committee held an internal enquiry when it detected this illegal act in a number of ballots. “It has been found that Nikhil Kumar, who was appointed as Counting Staff, is the person behind the entire sequence of events. It is pertinent to mention here that Bar Council of Delhi is a statutory body constituted under the Advocates Act 1961 and interference in the Elections of the Bar Council is a non-cognisable offence and immediate FIR is required to be lodged without any delay.”
‘Want stricter probe’
Murari Tiwari, a lawyer at the Delhi High Court, who is also contesting elections said that they want the matter to be probed thoroughly, to avoid any similar acts being done in future. “During the process of elimination, around 75-80 candidates were eliminated. On April 15, we noticed that numbers were being manipulated, only to focus on a particular candidate. This is not acceptable,” Tiwari said.
After all lawyers found out about the manipulation, they checked the CCTV footage, and found out the involvement of an employee, Nikhil Kumar, who has also been named as the accused in the FIR.
This is Tiwari’s fourth election. “Police has registered a case, and this will help with further proceedings, in case anybody attempts to manipulate the ballot and numbers,” he said.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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