The High Court has taken a strong stand on the tampering of ballot papers in the election of Sarpanch in Panje Ke Uttar village of Guruharsahai tehsil of Ferozepur district. The court has ordered the Punjab government to submit an affidavit of the officer with whom these ballot papers were lying before August 1, 2025.
This will make it clear who was responsible for the delivery of the ballot papers and how the security protocols were followed.
The matter began in the elections of October last year, when candidate Ramesh Kumar was declared the winner by a margin of 72 votes in the initial results. After this, the opposition demanded a recount of the votes. Ramesh argued in the High Court that the recount was done “without any solid basis and without any credible evidence against the procedure prescribed in law”.
He said that it was not right to cancel his election on the basis of recount alone and the possibility of tampering with the votes during the recount should have been independently examined. The government said in the court that the election was completed in a completely free and transparent manner.
During the hearing of the petition, a single bench of Justice Pankaj Jain ordered the opening of the ballot boxes presented in the court as per the earlier order. The court directed the concerned officials to sort the cancelled votes booth-wise separately.
According to the report, a total of 209 ballot papers were found cancelled, out of which 149 votes were cast in favour of the bucket election symbol (allotted to Ramesh). Apart from this, 30 votes were cast in favour of the tractor election symbol, 9 votes were cast in favour of both the symbols, while 21 votes were cast in favour of neither the bucket nor the tractor.
Seeing this, the court observed that most of the invalid votes clearly showed marks in favour of ‘Balti’, hence the possibility cannot be ruled out that the valid votes cast in favour of the ‘Bucket’ candidate were tampered with.
The court considered this as a possible electoral ‘manipulation’ and said that a detailed explanation on this was necessary.
The high court ordered the Punjab government to submit an affidavit of the officer with whom these ballot papers were kept safe before August 1, 2025. This will make it clear with whom the ballot papers were handed over and how the security protocol was followed.