A writ petition has been filed in the Supreme Court against the Election Commission’s decision to conduct re-polling at Bharatpur-19 where ballots were torn up during the last phase of counting.

Ward member candidate Gunjaman BK and Advocate Tulsiram Pande jointly filed the petition on Sunday demanding that the EC decision be quashed.

The petitioners have demanded annulment of the poll authority’s decision and a court order for the EC to resume counting of the votes in the disputed ward.

Advocate Tikaram Bhattarai said the petitioners have demanded certiorari 

and mandamus orders against the decision claiming that there is no objective evidence to prove that the counting station was captured.

The petition claims that the EC erroneously concluded that the counting station was captured.

The first hearing on the petition has been scheduled for Monday. The EC on Saturday directed the election officer to schedule re-polling for the local level election in the Chitwan metropolis ward.

Rejecting the decision, a meeting of the UML Standing Committee held after the EC’s decision had decided to take the legal recourse.

After 90 ballots were torn allegedly by the CPN (Maoist Centre) representatives on May 28, the election officer had stopped the vote counting process.

Since then the UML has been obstructing the House proceedings demanding resumption of vote counting.

The petitioners argue that such criminal activities would increase in the future elections if the decision was not annulled.