New Delhi: The Shiv Sena UBT has said that it will move court over the recently-concluded Lok Sabha election results in the Mumbai North West parliamentary seat, where the party’s candidate Amol Kirtikar was defeated by Shinde Sena’s Ravindra Waikar by a margin of only 48 votes.
Shiv Sena UBT leader Aaditya Thackeray said on Monday that the party will seek legal recourse over the results in the constituency and alleged that the BJP would not have won even 40 seats if EVMs were not used, reported The Indian Express.
The Shiv Sena UBT is part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi and the INDIA alliance.
Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) leader Sanjay Nirpuam hit back, saying that Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and Aaditya Thackeray should apologise for spreading false information about EVMs.
Earlier, the Vanrai police station in Mumbai had registered an FIR in the case after Kirtikar and two independent candidates pointed to Waikar’s brother-in-law Mangesh Pandilkar’s presence inside the counting station.
Pandilkar is named as an accused in the case. The police, however, claim that the first information report is filed only under Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code for ‘disobedience to an order lawfully promulgated by a public servant’ and has nothing to do with his meddling into the functionings of an EVM.
For the better part of the counting day, Waikar and Kirtikar had a close battle, with a margin of less than 100 votes. Around 5 pm, after EVM counting, Kirtikar was leading by just one vote. At 6.30 pm, Waikar demanded that the rejected ballot votes be recounted. The Returning Officer allowed it and soon after, Waikar was leading by 48 votes.
Both candidates then approached the Returning Officer to have the 111 invalid or rejected postal ballot votes reevaluated. The returning officer agreed to revaluation under camera scrutiny and following this exercise, Waikar was finally declared a winner.
