SHALIGRAM SHRIVASTAVA Vs. NARESH SINGH PATEL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The defeated candidate in the bye-election held in February, 2000 to the legislature assembly, Madhya Pradesh from Bhojpur assembly constituency, filed an election petition in the High Court or Madhya Pradesh challenging the declaration or the respondent as elected from the aforesaid assembly constituency. The election petition has been dismissed, hence this appeal.

(2.) Briefly, the facts are that nomination paper of one Bhagwan Singh was rejected at the time of scrutiny on the ground that he had not filled up the pro forma prescribed by the Election Commission vide letter dated 28-8-97. The said pro forma was required to be filled up to ascertain as to whether the candidate had been convicted or not for any offence mentioned in Section 8 of the Representation of People Act, 1951 for short the Act). Interestingly, the candidate, namely, Bhagwan Singh had filed an affidavit that information given in the pro forma was correct but the pro forma itself was left blank. He had though filled the nomination paper on Form 2-B as prescribed under Rule 4 of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 declaring that the candidate was qualified and also not disqualified for being chosen to fill the seat. According to the Election petitioner the nomination paper of Bhagwan Singh could not be rejected on the ground that he had not filled up the pro forma prescribed under the letter dated 28-8-97, since no such pro forma was statutorily provided under the provisions of the Act nor under the rules framed thereunder. It is contended that the commission could not legislate to prescribe a pro forma; at best it can only be an executive instruction of the Election Commission whereas the petitioner had filled the form prescribed under the Rules which did not suffer from any defect.

(3.) Yet another ground taken up by the petitioner was that failure to comply with executive direction of the Election Commission would not entail the consequence of rejection of the nomination paper much less where it is not provided that failure to fill up the pro forma would result in rejection of the nomination paper.