TARA DEVI Vs. STATE OF U P

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This writ petition has been filed by the Petitioner praying inter alia quashing of the impugned certificate dated 1st November, 2010 issued by the Returning Officer, Respondent No. 4 herein to the Respondent No. 5 along with other incidental prayers.

(2.) Mr. Radha Kant Ojha, learned Counsel appearing for the Petitioner, has relied upon a chart, annexed as Annexure-1 to the writ petition, which says that the Petitioner obtained 2759 votes when the Respondent No. 5 obtained 2093 votes. The Petitioner was declared elected by the Returning Officer under Rule 54 of the Uttar Pradesh Kshettra Panchayats and Zila Panchayats (Election of Members) Rules, 1994 (hereinafter in short called as the "Rules, 1994'). But such declaration of result was cancelled by the authority and the Respondent No. 5 was declared elected. Mr. P.S. Baghel, learned Senior Counsel appearing for the Respondent No. 5, has brought to our notice that the entire chart relating to obtaining of votes by each candidate in the election has not been annexed by the Petitioner which is suppression of the material facts. By saying so, he placed a copy of the entire chart. From a perusal of such chart we find that apparently there is no mistake in calculating the votes of Respondent No. 5 in all the columns of the chart itself excepting last column. When the complaint was made by the Respondent No. 5 to the District Magistrate, immediately calculation was done and it was found that wrongly 53 votes have been recorded in the last column of the sheet in the place and instead of 833 votes. No dispute has been raised by the Petitioner with regard to such chart. Therefore, prima facie it appears to us that it is an arithmetical mistake on the part of the Returning Officer which on the basis of the complaint was corrected, before forwarding the same to the State Election Commission in compliance with the Rule 56 of the Rules, 1994.

(3.) In S. Baldev Singh v. Teja Singh Swatantra (Dead) and Ors., 1975 AIR(SC) 693. a three Judges' Bench of the Supreme Court even in dealing with the election petition regarding recounting etc. has held that if formal defects had been misconstrued as substantial infirmities, or vice versa, resulting in wrongful reception or rejection, the sooner it was set right the better. This is illustrative, not exhaustive, but underlines the need, in appropriate cases, to be reasonably liberal in recheck and recount by Returning Officers. After all, fairness at the polls must not only be manifest but misgivings about the process must be erased at the earliest. Election petitions come to Court after a month and a half and ripen for trial months later and then the appeal, statutorily vested, inevitably follows. In this operation litigation, which is necessarily protracted, liberal recount or lax re-inspection of votes may create belated uncertainties, false hopes and a hovering sense of suspense, long after elections are over, Governments formed and legislatures begin to function. Moreover, while a recount, within the counting station, with the entire machinery familiar with the process still available at hand and operational, is one thing, a re-inspection and recount, which is an elaborate undertaking with mechanics and machinery of a specialised nature and which can not be judicially brought into existence without an amount of time, toil and expense, is a different thing.