A day after Punjab was directed to produce entire record of the July 8 meeting when election of Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Kapurthala Municipal Corporation was allegedly held, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the Deputy Commissioner to take charge.Taking up two writ petitions challenging the validity of the alleged election, the Division Bench of Justice Deepak Sibal and Justice Rupinder Chahal directed — as an interim measure — the Deputy Commissioner to discharge the duties of Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor with assistance of newly elected councils. The Bench also sent the video of the proceedings to Chandigarh FSL to authenticate and check frame by frame the actual number of votes cast. Directions were also issued to produce the transcript. At the onset, the State counsel produced the videography and proceedings of the meeting dated July 8 following the court’s earlier directions. It was then minutely examined by the Bench.The petitions were filed by Kapurthala MLA Rana Gurjeet Singh and 26 elected councillors against the State of Punjab and other respondents challenging the purported election of the Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor at the alleged “first meeting” of the Corporation held on July 8Senior advocates Jattvibeil Chadha and Chetan Mittal, along with advocates Kunal Mulwani, Avichal Sharma, Ritvik Garg and Akshay Chadha appeared for the petitioners. According to the petitions, elections to the 50 wards of the Municipal Corporation were held on May 26. The petitioners claimed that the Congress and its supporters secured a clear majority and commanded 27 votes in the electoral college comprising 50 elected councillors and the Kapurthala MLA as the ex-officio member, while the ruling party’s group had 24 votes.The petitioners contended that under Section 38(2) of the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act, 1976, the first meeting of the newly elected House, at which councillors are administered oath and the Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor are elected, is required to be held immediately after the notification under Section 17 and not later than 30 days from the date of notification.They submitted that the notification was issued on June 8, making July 7 the last permissible date for convening the first meeting. According to the petitions, the meeting was instead fixed for July 8 after intervention by the High Court in an earlier writ petition.The petitioners alleged that the delay was deliberate and intended to exert pressure on newly elected councillors to support the ruling party’s mayoral candidate. They further claimed that threats of false criminal cases were allegedly extended to councillors belonging to the Congress and other parties if they did not change their allegiance.The petitions referred to an earlier writ petition, which was disposed of on July 7 after the authorities informed the High Court that the first meeting had been scheduled for July 8. The petitioners also relied upon a communication dated July 5 issued by the Commissioner, Jalandhar Division, to the Commissioner, Municipal Corporation, Kapurthala, directing that videography of the meeting be ensured in terms of instructions issued by the Department of Local Government.According to the petitions, 27 councillors supporting the Congress-backed mayoral candidate were seated on one side of the meeting hall, while 24 councilors supporting the ruling party’s candidate were seated separately.The petitioners alleged that the Municipal Commissioner addressed only the group of 24 councillors and invited councilor Anil Shukla to propose the name of their candidate. It was claimed that Shukla then approached the Divisional Commissioner, sat with him and announced that their mayor had been elected without any opportunity being afforded to the majority group to propose its candidate or cast votes.The petitions further alleged that no voting by show of hands took place, no counting was conducted, no formal result was declared, recorded or notified, and the officials left the venue without conducting elections to the posts of Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor.The petitions further alleged that although the authorities had themselves directed that the entire proceedings be videographed, only a selective portion of the meeting was actually recorded.Seeking judicial intervention, the petitioners prayed for quashing of the purported proceedings of July 8 and for directions to conduct a fresh, free and transparent election under the supervision of an independent observer. They also sought preservation and production of the complete videography, CCTV footage and all records relating to the meeting.