SUKHDEO NARAYAN Vs. MAHADEVANANDA GIRI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners have filed this application in this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India for issue of a writ in the nature of quo warranto against the respondent who is holding --and, according to the petitioners, illegally -- the office of the Chairman of the Arrah municipality. The petitioners claim to be the voters of the various wards of the said municipality. In an election held on the 28th of March, 1959, commissioners of the municipality were elected. The commissioners, at their first meeting held on the 12th of September, 1959, elected Mahanth Mahadevananda Giri, the respondent, who was admittedly not one of the commissioners, to be the chairman of the Board. In that election, Satrunjay Prasad Singh, one of the elected commissioners was also a candidate for the office of the chairman but he was defeated and the respondent secured the majority of votes.

(2.) On the 25th and 26th of September, 1959, Satrunjay Prasad Singh, the defeated candidate tor the office of the chairman, as also one Shri Bhagwan Singh, another elected commissioner of Arrah municipality, filed two separate election petitions in the court of the Election Commissioner, Shahabad, at Arrah, under the Bihar Municipal Elections and Election Petitions Rules, hereinafter to be referred to as the Rules, challenging the election of the respondent, inter alia, on the ground that he was not entitled to be elected as chairman of the municipality because at the time when the election tool place, he was neither an elected commissioner of the municipality not did he possess the other requisite qualifications as required by Sub-section (1) of Section 20 of the Bihar and Orissa Municipal Act, 1922, hereinafter to be referred to as the Act. Both the petitions were heard together by the learned District Judge of Shahabad in his capacity as the Municipal Election Commissioner and were dismissed by his order dated the 7th of March, I960, under Rule 68, because of a fatal defect in them in that the provisions of Rule 65(2) (a) of the Rules were not complied with. The Election Commissioner, in regard to the main question mooted before him, held

(3.) Thereafter the present petitioners filed this application on the 10th of May, 1960, for an information in the nature of a quo warranto on the ground decided by the Election Commissioner against the respondent because he could not declare his election void as the election petitions were dismissed on, some technical grounds.