S SHANKERIAH Vs. VENKAT RATNAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition filed under Article 227 of the Constitution. It arises out of the rejection of the nomination paper filed by the petitioner in respect of the by-election of a councillor to the Municipal Corporation, Hyderabad,from Nampally Constituency. The petitioner and respondents 2 and 3 filed their nominations. The first respondent was the Returning Officer. The nomination form was duly filled in and signed by the petitioner. On the reverse of the same paper, he also wrote out in his own hand a declaration specifying his preference in the matter of symbols, but that was not signed by him. Therefore, the first respondent (Returning Officer) rejected his nomination paper. An appeal to the Chief Judge, City Small Causes Court, Hyderabad, proved unsuccessful. Therefore, the petitioner has come up with the present petition.

(2.) The controversy between the parties lies within a brief compass. Before setting it out, it is useful to refer to the relevant sections of the Hyderabad Municipal Corporations Act, 1955 (hereinafter referred to as ' the Act'):

(3.) The case of the respondents, who resist this petition, is that because the petitioner did not sign the declaration regarding symbols, his nomination paper was rightly rejected. As against this, the learned Counsel for the petitioner argues, that section section 36 (4) of the Act does not specifically require the declaration regarding symbols to be signed by the candidate. Further, it is argued by him that the omission to sign the declaration even if it be a defect, is only a technical defect, which is not of a substantial character and that therefore the Returning Officer was not justified in rejecting the nomination paper, in view of the clear provisions of section 39 (4) of the Act. No doubt, section 36 (3) of the Act provides for the form of declarations to be prescribed by rules made under the Act. But the argument of the petitioner's Counsel is that, the declarations contemplated or prescribed by section 36 (3) of the Act does not take in a declaration regarding symbols falling within section 36 (4) of the Act Section 36 (4) of the Act states that every nomination paper delivered under sub-section (1) shall be also accompanied by a declaration in writing specifying the particular symbol in the order of preference, etc., The word ' also ' occurring in this provision is, in my view, to be understood as denoting something over and above what sub-section (3) requires or permits to be prescribed by the rules. In fact if the declaration regarding symbols falling within the purview of sub-section. (4) was also contemplated by sub-section (3) there was hardly any need for subsection (4). One cannot attribute to the Legislature redundancy. On the other hand the proper rule of construction of a statute is to give every provision and word employed by the Legislature some meaning and purpose. Therefore, an, interpretation which would render section 36 (4) of the Act a surplusage or which would make it merely repetitious, has to be avoided. At the same time the different provisions of a statute, more especially so, when the provisons happen to be subsections of the same section, have to be read harmoniously, so that one sub-section may not conflict with the other .These rules of interpretation lead me to the view that the Legislature did not intend by sub-section (3) that the rule-making authority should prescribe by rules a declaration in the matter of the choice of symbols. That was separately dealt with by the Legislature in sub-section (4). I am, therefore, inclined to the view that the Rule-making authority in prescribing by rule 5 a declaration regarding a matter, which falls entirely under sub-section (4), did something which it was not required to do by the statute. This view, however, is not decisive in this case Even if I come to the conclusion that the rule-making authority was competent to prescribe a form of the declaration under sub-section (4), I should hold that the omission to sign that form was only a technical defect, which was not of a substantial character. The circumstance that the declaration in question was written out by the petitioner in his own hand on the back of the same sheet of paper, on one side of which stood the nomination paper, admittedly signed by the petitioner, and the further fact that the entire paper including the declaration was presented in person to the Returning Officer by the petitioner, highlight the technical nature of the defect and underline the unsubstantial character of the omission. It is, however, argued for the contesting respondents that in spite of what I have stated above, the omission to sign a declaration, although it was written by the petitioner himself on the back of his nomination paper and was presented in person by him to the Returning Officer, was a substantial defect, so substantial as to render his nomination paper invalid. This argument practically ignores the provisions of section 39 (4) of the Act. I should think that if section 39 (4) of the Act cannot apply to a case like the present, it is very difficult to find another case to which it can possibly apply. Courts have almost uniformly leaned against rejecting a nomination paper on hyper-technical grounds, that is to say, grounds which does not touch the substance of the matter and which are only the result of some inadvertence, oversight or clerical mistake and the like. Such mistakes are, in many statutes, permitted to be corrected and cured without causing the person concerned to forfeit or lose the right given to him by law. In Subbaraya v. Muthusami, (1954) 1 M.L.J. 191 : A.I.R. 1954 Mad.813 a Division Bench of the Madras High Court consisting of Rajamannar, C.J., and Venkatarama Ayyar, J., dealt with the provisions of section 33 (3) of the Representation of the People Act (1951) as it then stood. This section required that