MEGHABEN DATTESHKUMAR AMIN Vs. STATE ELECTION COMMISSION

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner has challenged the judgment dated 9th June 2017 passed by the learned Principal Civil Judge & JMFC, Borsad in Election Petition No. 1 of 2017 by which the petitioner's election petition came to be dismissed.

(2.) Brief facts are as under :

(3.) Before the learned Judge, the election petition was tried at length. The petitioner's evidence was recorded. She was crossexamined. Returning Officer also gave his deposition. He was cross examined by the appellant. Two main aspects came up for consideration before the learned Judge. One was whether the Returning Officer had committed an error in accepting the postal ballots as valid votes. And the second was whether the petitioner's request for recount of the votes should be granted. With respect to the first question, the learned Judge substantially held in favour of the petitioner. Case of the petitioner was that while issuing the postal ballots, Form-16 had to be attested by the Gazetted Officer which in the present case was not done. This would completely destroy the sanctity of the postal ballots. The learned Judge accepted this proposition and declared that as many as 31 out of 32 postal ballots were invalid. Regarding recount, the learned Judge did not accept the petitioner's prayer. He was of the opinion that even after discarding 31 postal ballots which were all polled in favour of the returned candidate, there was still a margin of four votes between the two candidates. He, therefore, refused to set-aside the election of the returned candidate and dismissed the election petition. This judgment, the petitioner has challenged in the present writ petition.