H R ANNAMALAI MUDALIAR Vs. DEVARAJA URS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS Election Petition relates to the election of a Member to the Mysore Legislative Assembly from the Hunsur Assembly Constituency, in the elections held on 15 -2 -1967. The respondent was declared duly elected by the Returning Officer on 21 -2 -1967.

(2.) THE petitioner and the respondent amongst others filed their nomination papers before the Returning Officer, in response to the Notification in the Official Gazette of Mysore dated 13 -1 -1967 calling for nominations. The nomination papers were scrutinised on 21 -1 -1967. The respondent raised objections to the nomination of the petitioner contending that the petitioner held subsisting contracts with the Public Works Department of the Government of Mysore, in the course of his business as a licensed Public Works Department Contractor, and therefore was disqualified to stand for Elections to the Mysore Legislative Assembly. The Returning Officer, after giving an opportunity to the parties to adduce evidence in support of their respective contentions, rejected the nomination paper of the petitioner on 22 -1 -1967, under the provisions of Section 36(2)(a) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 (Hereinafter referred to as the Act), holding that on the date fixed for the scrutiny of the petitioner's nomination paper, the petitioner's contracts with the Government of Mysore subsist and he is therefore disqualified. The petitioner challenges this order of the Returning Officer as being erroneous inasmuch as on facts there were actually no subsisting contracts on the date of the scrutiny of the nomination papers.

(3.) ON these allegations, the petitioner has filed the above Election Petition under Ss. 80 and 81 of the Act, praying that the order of the Returning Officer, rejecting the Petitioner's nomination paper for election as a Member of the Mysore Legislative Assembly from the Hunsur Constituency at the 1967 General Elections be held to be irregular, illegal and improper and to declare that the election of the respondent to the Mysore Legislative Assembly from the Hunsur Assembly Constituency is void.