‘Bhari kursi’ trumps ‘khali kursi’ in MP recall vote

BHOPAL: “Bhari kursi” (occupied chair) prevailed over “khali kursi” (empty chair) in Deori Tuesday as voters chose continuity over recall, allowing municipal chairperson Neha Alkesh Jain to retain her post in Madhya Pradesh’s first right-to-recall verdict since the law’s revival last year.

In the counting held on Jan 21, the “occupied chair” option secured 7,282 votes, prevailing over “empty chair”, which polled 6,085 votes, officials of State Election Commission said.


A total of 13,367 votes were cast in the civic poll on Jan 19, sealing the fate of a rare democratic experiment that once again drew national attention to MP’s distinctive accountability mechanism.

The Deori verdict effectively ended months of political churn in the Sagar district town, where Jain’s position remained under a cloud following internal dissent and legal wrangling.

Thirteen of the 15 elected councillors earlier expressed no confidence in her leadership, triggering the recall process under provisions restored by the state govt in 2025 after a seven-year hiatus. Jain also faced removal by the urban administration department before securing a court stay and returned to office, surviving what was widely seen as a direct test of her public legitimacy.

Under the right-to-recall system, first introduced in MP in 2000, voters are not offered rival candidates but are instead asked to choose symbolically between an empty chair and an occupied one.

A vote for the empty chair leads to the incumbent’s removal and fresh polls, while a vote for the occupied chair allows the elected head to continue. In Deori’s case, the EVM display showed a woman seated on the chair, reflecting the incumbent’s gender. Polling was held across 30 booths in 15 wards, with 69.3% turnout, unusually high for a civic recall exercise and indicative of the stakes involved.