SURUBALI DEEP Vs. JAMUNA NAIK AND ORS.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) ON 22.2.2012 the petitioner in this writ petition was declared elected as a Samiti Savya of Bubel Gram Panchayat under Puintala Block. Opposite party No. 1 herein filed Election Petition No. 21 of 2012 before the Election Tribunal -cum -Civil Judge (Senior Division), Bolangir challenging the election of the petitioner on two grounds:

(2.) THE petitioner preferred an appeal against the judgment of the learned Election Tribunal before the learned District Judge, Bolangir who, vide judgment dated 27.1.2015 (Annexure -6), has confirmed the judgment passed by the learned Election Tribunal.

(3.) LEARNED counsel for the petitioner argues that when the party challenging the election failed to discharge the burden of making out a case that the petitioner was unable to read and write Oriya, learned Election Tribunal committed gross error of law in asking the petitioner to face a test asking her to read from some newspaper. In support of such contention, he has relied on a judgment of this Court in : 2010 (Supp. -I) OLR - 73 (Labangalata Mallick v. Mandakini Mallick and others). Having carefully gone through the said judgment, I do not find any observation made therein which supports the contention raised by the learned counsel for the petitioner. In the reported case, which relates to an election matter, the learned Election Tribunal during the course of hearing had permitted the winning candidate, whose election was challenged on the ground that she was unable to read and write Oriya, to read some pages from the book CHHABILA BARNOBODH and also asked her to read some sections of the Orissa Gram Panchayat Act in its Oriya Edition. It was found that the winning candidate was able to read but while so reading she committed several mistakes. She was also asked to write some Oriya Yuktakhyara words and while writing the same she committed number of mistakes.