Secrecy’s out: Chandigarh admn to adopt open voting in mayoral poll

In a decisive step towards transparency, the UT administration has green-lit open voting in future mayoral elections, replacing the long-standing secret ballot system — a move spurred by the 2024 vote-rigging scandal and persistent demands from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for a fair and open electoral process.

UT administrator Gulab Chand Kataria has directed the Deputy Commissioner’s office to draft an amendment to the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation (Procedure and Conduct of Business) Regulations, 1996, to allow voting by a show of hands instead of the previous system of secret ballots.

A senior UT administration official, privy to the development, stated, “To prevent issues of vote tampering, as seen in 2024, we will be revising the voting procedure. Going forward, councillors will vote by raising their hands instead of using secret ballots.”

Final notification after public suggestions

The administration aims to complete the process by June, after which a public notice will be issued to invite suggestions and objections from city residents. Based on the feedback, a final notification will be issued.

Since the establishment of the Chandigarh municipal corporation in 1996, mayoral elections have been conducted using secret ballots. However, the events of the 2024 elections, which spiralled into a national scandal, evoked calls for greater transparency in the election process.

On January 30, 2024, during the mayoral poll, then presiding officer Anil Masih was caught on camera invalidating eight votes cast in favour of AAP-Congress alliance candidate Kuldeep Kumar Dhalor to secure victory for BJP’s Manoj Sonkar.

The brazen vote-rigging earned Masih the wrath of the Supreme Court, which termed it a “murder of democracy”. Overturning the results, the top court declared Dhalor the winner, giving Chandigarh its first non-BJP, non-Congress mayor. The incident sparked nationwide outrage and damaged the BJP’s credibility, as reflected in the subsequent Lok Sabha election results.

In October 2024, the MC House, led by the AAP mayor, passed a resolution proposing that future mayoral elections be conducted via a show of hands instead of secret ballots.

With no decision by the administration thereon, AAP moved the Punjab and Haryana high court and even the Supreme Court ahead of the 2025 polls in January to replace the secret ballot system with open voting to ensure fairness. However, the apex court refused to intervene and left the decision to the administration.

The shift to an open voting system will also help curb cross-voting, as seen in the recent elections, where three cross-votes from the AAP-Congress camp helped BJP’s Harpreet Kaur Babla win against AAP’s Prem Lata. With the new system, such manipulations will become more difficult, as councillors will be required to publicly raise their hands to cast votes — similar to how resolutions on development projects and other issues are passed in the House.

Notably, Chandigarh currently lacks an anti-defection law to prevent councillors from switching parties before elections, a recurring issue in every election.