The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday stayed Saturday’s Election Commission (EC) decision to conduct re-election in Ward 19 of Bharatpur Metropolitan City and asked the authorities concerned to maintain status quo on the decision until Sunday.

A single bench of Justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana issued an interim order against the EC decision in response to a writ filed by Gunjaman BK, a ward member candidate for Bharatpur-19, and Tulsiram Pandey, an advocate.

According to SC Spokesperson Mahendra Upadhyay, the bench has asked both the petitioners and defendants to appear before the court on Sunday.

The EC on Saturday had decided re-polling in Ward 19 of Bharatpur Metropolitan City, saying a report submitted by Chitwan chief election officer, who was tasked with ascertaining the number of ballot papers torn allegedly by CPN (Maoist Centre) representatives on the night of May 28, showed that the counting centre was illegitimately taken under control.

Some Maoist Centre representatives had allegedly torn ballot papers at around 11:45pm on May 28 when CPN-UML’s Devi Gywali was ahead of Maoist Centre’s Renu Dahal in the mayoral race of Bharatpur. Renu is daughter of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal.

The UML since then had been demanding resumption of vote counting while the Maoist Centre and the Nepali Congress, which had formed an electoral alliance, had been calling for re-election.

BK and Pandey had moved the apex court on Sunday, a day after the EC decided to conduct re-election in Ward 19 of Bharatpur, demanding that the court annul the poll body’s decision and order the authorities concerned to resume vote counting.

The petitioners have argued in their petition that the poll body’s decision to conclude that the vote counting centre was captured and call for re-election was completely erroneous.