Chandigarh, December 19: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today said the party’s stand that the Congress party had indulged in violence and booth capture to save itself from a humiliating defeat in the municipal corporation elections in Patiala had been proved correct with the SAD candidate winning the repoll ordered in Ward number 37 with a huge margin.
In a statement here, former minister Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said the election, which the SAD candidate won with a margin of 600 votes, also reflected the ground reality in Patiala. “It also proves that if the State Election Commission had countermanded the election as demanded by the SAD-BJP combine and conducted the election afresh, the Congress party would have suffered a crushing defeat”.
The SAD leader said now it was for the Congress party to explain to the people how when it had won 59 out of the 60 wards in the corporation town, it had managed to lose the only ward where recounting was ordered by a huge margin. He said the repoll had exposed all Congress claims of free and fair polls and proved that violence accompanied with misuse of official machinery was responsible for the Congress victory in Patiala and other parts of the State. “This calls for taking immediate action against all civil and police officials who murdered democracy by acting like Congress agents”, he added.
