APPUKUTTAN Vs. BIJUKUMAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The elected candidate in a Block Panchayat Election held on 25.9.2000 is the petitioner in this revision. The 1st respondent filed the election O.P. by stating that there was corrupt practice in the counting process. According to the first respondent, at the time of counting, he had secured one vote more but later it was made to appear that both of them got equal votes and on the basis of toss the petitioner was declared elected. There are various other allegations with regard to what happened at the time of counting and it is unnecessary to go into those details in this revision as the revision is concerned only with the order of the District Court passed on the preliminary finding on maintainability of the Original Petition.

(2.) The first point that was pressed before the District Court against the maintainability of the O.P. was that the copies of the petition served on the respondent is not in accordance with S.89(2) of the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act. That provision reads as follows:

(3.) The learned Senior Counsel Shri. K. Sudhakaran relied on the decision of the Supreme Court reported in Rajendra Singh v. Usha Rani ( AIR 1984 SC 956 ) and contended that failure to comply with the provisions is fatal to the election petition and there is no question of giving the benefit of doubt to the first respondent. In that case admittedly the petitioner had supplied two sets of copies of election petition; one set of corrected copies and the other set containing vital omissions. The Supreme Court found that what was served on the respondents was the one containing vital omissions and in such circumstances it was held the election petition was not maintainable. The facts of this case are entirely different. S.89(2) of the Panchayat Raj Act is a verbatim reproduction of S.81(3) of the Representation of People Act. In Ch. Subba Rao v. Member, Election Tribunal ( AIR 1964 SC 1027 ), a Five Member Bench of the Apex Court had occasion to consider the question as to when S.81(3) of the Representation of People Act can be said to be complied with substantially. In that case even the words "true copy" was not written before the signature of the petitioner in each copy. Only the following requirements were complied with. (1) The petition has been accompanied by the requisite number of copies, (2) The copies that accompanied the petition were true copies, and (3) Each of those copies bore the signature of the petitioner.