Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Tuesday alleged "cheating" in the Chandigarh mayoral polls and said the day will be remembered as Black Day for country's democracy.

His reaction came after the BJP swept the Chandigarh mayoral polls, winning all the three posts including of mayor, as it defeated the Congress-AAP alliance.

Mann said now his worry is that those who did the "cheating" can go to any extent in the parliamentary elections.

"This day will be remembered as Black Day for our country's democracy," Mann told a press conference here.

In the mayoral polls, BJP candidate Manoj Sonkar defeated the AAP's Kuldeep Kumar for the mayor's post, polling 16 votes against the 12 won by his rival. Eight votes were declared invalid.

In Chandigarh, councillors of the INDIA bloc parties -- AAP and Congress -- protested as soon as the results were announced.

The Punjab CM accused presiding officer Anil Masih of making some marks on the ballots during the counting, rendering them invalid and stated that the invalid ballots tilted the balance in the BJP candidate's favour.

"This has come when we celebrated the Republic Day a few days ago. Now, in the polls, the Constitution has been trampled. I will say that the mayoral elections were looted by the BJP.

"Such examples have been there. They (BJP) did so in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa, and Maharashtra...they do this in northeastern states," Mann said.

He said before the start of the polls on Tuesday, a demonstration was given by the officials for the councillors.

"It was surprising that first, the presiding officer came late by nearly 40 minutes when polls were scheduled to take place. Later, when ballots were taken out (for mayor post), he first counted the ballots. In another round, he is seen signing those ballots," said Mann, alleging there was tampering with the ballot papers in the elections.

"We have also fought elections, is this some joke going on here," said Mann.

He claimed this was visible in the video as the whole process was being videographed.

Mann also said there were no agents of the AAP and Congress, who should have been allowed to be there.

"Anil Masih is an office-bearer of BJP's minority wing, who was made presiding officer. I demand that 'deshdroh' (treason) case should be registered against the presiding officer. He has murdered democracy," alleged Mann.

"He even did not call the polling agents of the opposition when ballots were counted. Even invalid ballots should have been shown to the agents of both the (AAP-Cong) parties as is the norm," he said.

The Punjab CM also demanded that all records of the presiding officer's phone calls should be made public.

"With whom he was in contact these days, we need to know," he said.

He said several opposition parties keep demanding holding of polls through ballot papers, "but if this is the way how ballots are counted as we saw in mayoral polls, imagine what will happen then".

Training guns on the BJP, Mann said, "If they cannot tolerate that an opposition combine wins in a small city (Chandigarh), then what will happen in Lok Sabha polls. This is my worry".

"Are votes counted like this. We will approach court and show all the video evidence there," Mann said, while adding people also watched the events that unfolded on Tuesday.

He said the media should also ponder over what has happened in Chandigarh mayoral polls and hold debates on this.

On January 24, the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed the Chandigarh administration to hold the mayoral polls at 10 am on January 30. While quashing the order postponing the elections, the court called it "unreasonable, unjustified and arbitrary".

Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Telegraph Online staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.