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Written by Neha Chauhan Tuesday, 15 December 2009 08:20

A third candidate, Murari Tiwari, has made the cut in the Delhi Bar Council elections, as voting is expected to conclude by Friday (18 December), with more than half of the 129 candidates already eliminated.

After the early first-round wins of Abhay Verma and K K Manan, as first reported on Saturday (12 December), incumbent Delhi Bar Council member Tiwari has now been confirmed in his position.

The process of elimination of least preferred candidates is meanwhile continuing and it is understood that more than half of the 129 candidates have so far been eliminated in the preferred voting system.

However, Luthra & Luthra litigation partner Vijay Sondhi, who is the only major law firm candidate and who has been supported by the Society of Indian Law Firms (SILF), is understood to be one of the candidates who is still in the race.

The currently presiding Delhi Bar Council chairman Ved Prakash Sharma told Legally India yesterday: "The counting process is being smoothly conducted and we are hopeful of concluding it within three days."

"The status is that three candidates have been declared elected and I am comfortable placed at number five, but the process is still on and the final result would be declared hopefully by Friday," he added.

Bar Council of India (BCI) officials conducting the count are understood to have taken a break for few hours yesterday morning after non-stop counting since the 4 December polls. They resumed counting in the Delhi High Court yesterday from 3 pm until around 7:30 pm.

Sharma stated that the elimination process had now started after the phase of counting the first preference votes had concluded.

"25 members are to be elected from a list of 129; they have started eliminating from the bottom. The lowest fetcher of votes would get eliminated first," he said. "The top 25 would then be declared elected automatically and those who reached the desired quota of 786 votes are being declared elected even without final outcome of result."

Sharma noted that such a quota was about attaining a fixed number of votes, much like quota allocation under the single transferable system of voting in the Rajya Sabha.

The elections saw a turnout of 50 per cent out of a total of 41,000 eligible voters, according to online news reports.

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