Chandigarh, July 15 -- The Punjab and Haryana high court on Tuesday asked deputy commissioner, Kapurthala to discharge duties of mayor and senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor of municipal corporation, Kapurthala. The HC order effectively means that the mayor's election has been stayed. The HC bench of justice Deepak Sibal and justice Rupinderjit Chahal acted on the plea from Congress MLA Rana Gurjeet Singh, an ex-officio member of the municipal corporation, Kapurthala, and others, who had filed the plea seeking quashing of the election of the mayor held on July 8. According to the plea, in the elections for 50 wards of the MC, held on May 26, the Congress and its supporters secured a clear majority. The petitioner's group had 27 votes out of a total electorate of 51 (50 councillors and the MLA as ex-officio member), as against 24 of the ruling party's (AAP) group. However, ruling party's Narinder Singh Mansua, Congress defector, was declared as winner. The petition was taken up on Monday and for Tuesday's hearing, the court had summoned the proceedings record and videography of the poll process. After examining the same in open court, the court has sent the video for forensic examination to authenticate actual number of votes casted and has also asked to produce the transcript of the video in question. The court observed that in the videography all the 50 councillors can be seen but after the commencement of election process, the videography of only that portion has been made in which only those councillors are visible who were supporting the ruling party candidate. Senior advocate Chetan Mittal after the hearing said that in the video only 21-22 councillors are visible who raised their hands for voting in favour of Mansua. The court observed that for fair and transparent elections the videography of entire hall should have been done. In the video, only proposal regarding nominating the name Mansua for the post of mayor was audible, however, prima facie, nothing regarding the proposal for other two posts, it orally said. The detailed order is awaited. Mittal also added that from the video it is impossible to find out the result for two other posts and the convener and the presiding officer rather than controlling the chaos, are seen leaving the premises hurriedly and while doing so they verbally announced the mayor's name. The election was conducted on July 8. Rana Gurjeet said: "I have full faith in the decision of the HC in staying Kapurthala mayoral elections. Those officials who played with democracy on the directions of their political bosses must be penalised," he said....