MANOHAR NATHURAO SAMARTH Vs. MAROTRAOAND VICE VERSA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) A tricky issue of statutory construction, beset with semantic ambiguity and pervasive possibility, and a prickly provision which if interpreted literally leads to absurdity and if construed liberally, leads to rationality, confront the court in these dual appeals by special leave spinning around the eligibility for candidature of an employee under the Life Insurance Corporation and the declaration of his rival, 1st respondent, as duly returned in a City Corporation election. A tremendous trifle in one sense, since almost the whole term has run out. And yet, divergent decisions of Division Benches of Madras and Calcutta and a recent unanimous ruling of a Bench of five judges of Punjab and Haryana together with the Bombay High Court's decision under appeal have made the precedential erudition sufficiently conflicting for this Court to intervene and declare the law, guided by the legislative text but informed by the imperatives of our constitutional order. The sister appeal filed by the respondent relates to that part of the judgment of the High Court which reverses the declaration granted by the trial judge that he be deemed the returned candidate.

(2.) This little preface leads us on a brief narration of the admitted facts. The appellant (in C. A. 2406 of 1977) was a candidate for election to the Corporation of the City of Nagpur from Ward 34 and his nearest rival was the 1st respondent, although there were other candidates also. Judged by the plurality of votes, the appellant secured a large lead over his opponents and was declared elected. The end of the poll process is often the beginning of the forensic process at the instance of the defeated candidates with its protracted trial and appeals upon appeals, thus making elections doubly expensive and terribly traumatic. The habit of accepting defeat with grace, save in gross cases, is a sign of country's democratic maturity. Anyway, in the present case, when the appellant was declared the returned candidate the respondent challenged the verdict in court on a simple legal ground of ineligibility of the former who was, during the election, a development officer under the Life Insurance Corporation (for short, the LIC). The lethal legal infirmity, pressed with success, by the respondent was that under Regulation 25 of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (Staff) Regulations, 1960 (briefly, the Regulations) framed by the LIC, all its employees were under an embargo on taking part in municipal elections, save with the permission of the Chairman. Therefore, the appellant who was such an employee and had not sought or got the Chairman's permission laboured under a legal ineligibility as contemplated in Section 15 (g) of the City of Nagpur Corporation Act, 1948 (hereinafter referred to as the Act). Both the Courts below shot down the poll verdict with this statutory projectile and the aggrieved appellant urges before us the futility of this invalidatory argument.

(3.) A complementary regulation arming the Management with power to take action for breach of this ban is found in Regulation 39 which states.