B.C. New Democrats and Conservatives are trading shots over a court case that's aiming to overturn provincial election results in Surrey-Guildford 鈥� the tightest race in B.C. and the final seat needed for Premier David Eby to form a majority government.
Garry Begg claimed the seat for the BC NDP by just 22 votes after a judicial recount in November. In January, Conservative challenger Honveer Singh Randhawa filed a petition in B.C. Supreme Court asking that the result be overturned due to alleged election "irregularities."
Then, on Monday this week (June 16), Randhawa and his lawyer, Sunny Uppal, filed an amended petition in B.C. Supreme Court.
The B.C. NDP claims that the amended petition has "weakened" Randhawa's position, with several claims being dropped in the amended petition.
Tania Jarzebiak, provincial director of the BC NDP, provided a statement to Surrey Now-Leader.
"Mr. Randhawa has weakened his position with this amended petition, abandoning several claims that he had previously made," the statement said.
鈥淎s we have said before, the BC NDP is confident that our province鈥檚 elections are free, fair and democratic 鈥� and always have been. Honveer Randhawa and John Rustad owe these families an apology for the harm they've caused."
Rustad and the BC Conservatives are not formally involved in the petition, although Rustad has previously expressed support for Randhawa.
The original petition filed by Randhawa laid out details about 23 alleged non-resident voters and two cases where it's alleged that an individual voted twice under slightly different names, as well as going into detail about Randhawa's previous allegations that voting at Argyll Lodge, a mental health facility in Surrey, may have been carried out improperly.
Uppal told the Surrey Now-Leader that the amended petition did "drop several claims," but he disagrees with the notion that the new petition weakens their claim.
It was further investigations that led to them dropping several claims, Uppal said.
The allegation that voters had voted multiple times had been dropped because further investigations determined that it was not the same person voting twice, but different people with similar names voting.
The amended petition now only includes 10 non-resident voters.
The initial petition alleged that 22 people had voted in the riding "notwithstanding the fact they did not live there," Uppal said. "This number was arrived at because 22 voters had voted from residences they did not live at; however, Randhawa did not know where these voters actually lived."
Further investigations revealed that eight of the 22 voters resided elsewhere in the riding, and therefore, they were not included in the amended petition.
"However, approximately 10 voters have themselves now confirmed they voted in the riding when they were not supposed to and we should also be able to confirm another four individual voters did not live in the riding at trial," Uppal said. "Accordingly, although we are now alleging fewer voters voted in the riding when they weren鈥檛 supposed to, we have far stronger evidence for the remaining ones and thus our case is significantly stronger than prior to when the amended petition was filed."
The next scheduled court appearance is June 25 for a case management conference. The trial is scheduled to take place in late summer or early fall and is expected to last two to three weeks, Uppal said.
The claims in the petition have not been tested or proven in court.
