Hoshiarpur:- Former cabinet minister and senior BJP leader Teekshan Sood has said that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is trying to hijack the Municipal Corporation elections by resorting to dishonest tactics. He alleged that the entire process from ward delimitation to voter registration is illegal. There is no clarity about the new population figures, ward maps are not being made available, and voter registration is not being done properly.
The sole objective of the ruling party is to hijack the Hoshiarpur Municipal Corporation elections by any means necessary, including vote rigging. He asserted that these actions violate democratic norms and such elections cannot be considered legitimate. Earlier, after strong protests from the BJP over irregularities in voter registration, the Election Commission had ordered the preparation of the voter list from scratch; due to which the Hoshiarpur Municipal Corporation elections were held late compared to others.
However, significant irregularities also occurred during the re-drafting of the voter list. Due to the absence of a map in the draft dated May 18, 2026, votes belonging to ward number 43 were given to ward number 42, and vice versa. Hundreds of votes are unaccounted for. While the ruling party addressed some of the objections raised by the public, they cleverly shifted the votes of BJP and opposition party supporters to different wards. Now the situation is such that even objections cannot be raised on the final voter list.
Shockingly, the vote of the daughter of the sitting BJP councillor, Mrs. Narinder Kaur, who was registered at her own residence in ward number 12, was also shifted to another ward along with the votes of her entire neighbourhood. The votes of all six prospective BJP candidates from ward 15 and 6 — along with hundreds of other BJP supporters — have been diverted from these wards, preventing the candidates from casting their votes. Similar complaints have been reported from other wards as well.
BJP leaders who accompanied Mr. Sood — namely Mr. Vinod Parmar, Ashwini Ohri and Yashpal Sharma — strongly condemned the government’s attempts to hijack the elections through vote rigging and demanded that the Election Commission intervene in the matter. Mr. Sood said that he had personally lodged a complaint with the Election Commission regarding the issue, and the affected persons had also submitted written complaints to the Commission.