Dosanjh may face another recount in Canada poll
Vancouver : Indian Canadian leader Ujjal Dosanjh, who barely retained his Vancouver South seat by 22 votes in the Oct 14 general election, faces yet another recount as his opponents move court this week.
On the election night three weeks ago, Dosanjh was declared a winner with a 33-vote margin.
But since election laws make a court-supervised recount mandatory if the victory margin is one one-thousandth of the votes cast, a recount was ordered.
After the judge-supervised recount last week, Dosanjh was finally declared a winner but with a reduced margin of 22 votes, retaining the seat for the Liberal Party against Wai Young of the ruling Conservative Party – which is still 12 short of the 155-majority mark in the 308-member House of commons.
But now ruling party leaders say they will take the matter to court this week to seek yet another recount.
A Conservative Party official told the media that his party will seek a recount of all votes on the grounds that only 28 of 184 ballot boxes were reopened during the court-supervised recount.
He said his party wants the British Columbia Supreme Court in Vancouver to order all 184 ballot boxes recounted.
Under Canadian electoral laws, during a court-supervised recount a judge can decide how to a review a given result. He or she can check the vote tally sheets or order a recount of all valid ballots or review all the ballots.
Dosanjh had won this seat in 2006 with a comfortable margin of 9,000 votes.
But with a majority of about 40 percent ethnic Chinese voters in the constituency swinging to his opponent Wai Young, he barely managed to survive this time.
Indian-born Dosanjh, 61, was the first non-white premier of British Columbia province from February 2000 to May 2001 and later Canada’s health minister from 2004 to 2006.