In the High Court of Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh ...... (1) F.A.O. No.1409 of 2011 (O&M) ..... Date of decision:8.11.2011 Ranjit Kaur and others .....Appellants v. Additional Deputy Commissioner-cum-Presiding Officer, Election Tribunal, Gurdaspur and others .....Respondents .... (2) F.A.O. No.1410 of 2011 (O&M) ..... Sukha Singh and others .....Appellants v. Additional Deputy Commissioner-cum-Presiding Officer, Election Tribunal, Gurdaspur and others .....Respondents .... CORAM : HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE MOHINDER PAL ..... 1. Whether reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment? 2. To be referred to the reporters or not? 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the digest? ...... Present: Mr. M.S. Bedi, Advocate for the appellants. None for the respondents. ..... Mohinder Pal, J. This order will dispose of the above two appeals i.e. F.A.O. No.1409 of 2011 filed by Ranjit Kaur and others and F.A.O. No.1410 of F.A.O. No.1409/2011 (O&M) & F.A.O. No.1410 of 2011 (O&M) [2] 2011 filed by Sukha Singh and others as these arose from a common order dated 29.11.2010 passed by the Election Tribunal, Gurdaspur. These appeals are directed against the order dated 29.11.2010 passed by the Additional Deputy Commissioner-cum-Election Tribunal, Gurdaspur (for short `the Election Tribunal'), whereby election petitions filed by the petitioners (respondents herein) in both the petitions challenging the elections of respondents-Ranjit Kaur, Sukha Singh, Nirmal Singh, Swaran Kaur, Sukhdev Singh and Sheele (appellants herein) as Panches of Gram Panchayat of Village Sarupwali Khurd, Block Batala, District Gurdaspur were allowed and the elections of the villages being void were set aside. It was ordered to again conduct the elections for these villages and legal action be taken against respondent No.7. I have heard Mr. M.S. Bedi, learned counsel appearing for the appellants and have gone through the records of the case. Learned counsel for the appellants has submitted that the Election Tribunal has failed to examine the record and has mixed-up the election petitions of two villages. The Election Tribunal has not given any categoric finding as to whether the brief reason given for rejection of the nomination papers by the Returning Officer (respondent No.7) was valid or illegal. It has been submitted that no evidence was adduced by the election petitioners (respondents herein) and just on the basis of statement of the Returning Officer, the Election Tribunal has accepted the election petitions while the statement of Returning Officer was only to the extent of producing the record and nothing else. No body has put in appearance on behalf of the respondents. F.A.O. No.1409/2011 (O&M) & F.A.O. No.1410 of 2011 (O&M) [3] I have to decide this matter while looking to the documents produced before me and appreciating the arguments of counsel for the appellants. The Presiding Officer has gone through the various documents before allowing the election petitions. He has gone through the applications which were there at pages No.219 and 220 and also the record produced by the Returning Officer concerning Gurdev Singh, Paramjeet Kaur, Rajwinder Kaur, Gurpreet Kaur and Venus. It will be pertinent to mention here that only record of these persons have been produced. From the nomination papers of these persons, the Presiding Officer has come to the conclusion that the Returning Officer has dealt with these papers in a negligent manner. Some of the nomination papers were on the check list and there was no signatures of the candidates and neither these were having signatures of the Returning Officer. All these documents have been attested by the Returning Officer and from a bare perusal, it was clear that nomination papers of the petitioners have been rejected without assigning any reasons. The writing also does not match on all the nomination papers as different ink and different hand-writing has been used. Annexure-A.1, the nomination of Paramjeet Kaur has different hand writing on the front than on the back. The following is the extract of some of the discrepancies found by the Presiding Officer:- “On all these check lists the Returning Officer has himself given the certificate that these nomination papers were received in this office and no discrepancy is found in the same. From these there are signatures of respondent No.1 on some F.A.O. No.1409/2011 (O&M) & F.A.O. No.1410 of 2011 (O&M) [4] certificates and it appears that on some the signatures has been left due to negligence. As per the statement of respondent No.7 on page 183/184 total of 16 receipts were produced from which it is clear that 16 candidates filed their nomination paper but the form with regard to the nomination papers produced by respondent No.7 in which the nominations papers of all the candidates have been depicted to have been accepted or rejected, only name of 11 candidates have been mentioned from which 5 nominations paper are `rejected' and five are accepted and one nomination paper after its acceptance has been stated to have been `withdrawn'. This certificate has been signed by the Returning Officer respondent No.7 on 17.05.2008. In this earlier total of 11 nominations were written and thereafter 5 more are added and as such 16 are mentioned. 5 nominations which were accepted was cut and were made 6 and 5 which were earlier rejected against that five more were added and total was made to 10. Apart from these 11 what was done of 5 nominations is not clear from his statement. From the above, it is clear that these nominations were found to be correct but due to some connivance these were rejected by making the entry `no chula tax'/`no Annexure-1' and as such as many posts so being the candidates were declared without contest. The nominations paper of Lakha Singh, Satpal Singh, Gurjeet Kaur, Sawinder Singh and Manjeet Kaur were rejected. In this regard nothing is clear from the record produced by the Returning F.A.O. No.1409/2011 (O&M) & F.A.O. No.1410 of 2011 (O&M) [5] Officer.” In view of the observations made by the Election Tribunal and reproduced above, I do not find any reason to interfere with the impugned order passed by the Tribunal. Resultantly, these appeals are hereby dismissed being without any merit. November 8, 2011. (Mohinder Pal) Judge *hsp*