Case: S. Narayanaswami Vs. G. Pannerselvam &amp; Ors

directed at all or that the omission must be by mere oversight. The provisions discussed above demonstrated amply how legislative attention was paid to the qualifications of the electors as well as of the elected in every case. Hence the correct presumption, in such a case would be that the omission was deliberate. 18. A glance at the legislative history lying behind Article 171 also enables us to reach the conclusion that the omission by the Constitution makers or by Parliament to prescribe graduation as a qualification of the candidate for the graduates constituency must be deliberate. Section 60 and 61 of the Government of India Act 1935, deal with composition of provincial legislatures and of the two Chambers of such legislatures. The Upper Chambers in the Provincial Legislatures were to be composed of members retiring every third year in accordance with provisions of the Fifth Schedule to the Act. Rule 10 of this Schedule lays down: In a Province in which any seats are to be filled by representatives of backward areas or backward tribes, representatives of commerce, industry, mining and planting, representatives of landholders, representatives of universities or representatives of labour, persons to fill those seats.....shall be chosen in such manner as may be prescribed. On 30th April, 1936, the Government of India (Provincial Legislative Assemblies) Order of 1936 was issued by His Majesty in Council. It prescribed the qualifications of persons to be chosen from the special constituencies set up for representation in the Legislative Councils. A glance at the provisions relating to these qualifications, including those for the University seats, indicates that it was invariably expressly provided where it was so intended, that a necessary qualification of a candidate for a seat was that he or she should be entitled to vote for the choice of a member to fill it. Hence, legislative history on the subject would also indicate that, whenever any qualification of the candidate was intended to be imposed, this was expressly done and not left to mere implications. 19. We think that the view contained in the judgment under appeal, necessarily results in writing some words into or adding them to the relevant statutory provisions, to the effect that the candidates from graduates constituencies of Legislative Councils must also possess the qualification to having graduated. This contravenes the rule of plain meaning or literal construction which must ordinarily prevail. A logical corollary of that rule is that a statute may not be extended to meet a case for which provision has clearly and undoubtedly not been made (See Craies on Statute Law - 6th Edn. p. 70). An application of the rule necessarily involves that addition to or modification of words used in statutory provisions is not generally permissible (see e.g. Sri Ram Ram Narain Medhi v. State of Bombay, AIR 1959 SC 459 , British India General Insurance Co. Ltd., v. Captain Itbar Singh, (1960) 1 SCR 168 = (AIR 1959 SC 1331 ), R.G. Jacob v. Union of India, (1963) 3 SCR 800 = (AIR 1963 SC 550 .) Courts may depart from this rule only to avoid a patent absurdity (see e.g. State of Madhya Pradesh v. Asad Bharat Finance Co., AIR 1967 SC 276 . In Hira Devi v. District Board, Shahjahanpur, AIR 1952 SC 362 at p. 365 this Court observed: No doubt it is the duty of the Court to try and harmonise the various provisions of an Act passed by the Legislature. But it is certainly not the duty of the Court to stretch the words used by the Legislature to fill in gaps or omissions in the provisions of an Act. 20. Cases in which defects in statutory provisions may or may not be supplied by Courts have been indicated in well known words such as Sutherlands Statutory Construction (3rd Edn. Vol.2) (Paragraph 4924 at pages 455-458) and in Crawfords Construction of Statutes (1940 Edn.), Only one passage from the last mentioned work need be cited here: (p. 269): Where the statutes meaning is clear and explicit, words cannot be interpolated. In the first place, in such a case, they are not needed. If they should be interpolated, the statute would more than likely fail to express the legislative intent as the thought intended to be conveyed, might be altered by the addition of new words. They should not be interpolated even though the remedy of the statute would therefore be advanced, or a more desirable or just result would occur. Even where the meaning of the statute is clear and sensible, either with or without the omitted word, interpolation is improper, since the primary source of the legislative intent is in the language of the statute. 21. We think that the language as well as the legislative history of Article 171 and 173 of the Constitution and Section 6 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, enable us to presume a deliberate omission of the qualification that the representative of the Graduates should also be a graduate. In our opinion, no absurdity results if we presume such an intention. We cannot infer, as the learned Judge of the Madras High Court had done, from the mere fact of such an omission and opinions about a supposed scheme of functional representation underlying Article 171 of our Constitution, that the omission was either unintentional or that it led to absurd results. We think that by adding a deemed to be necessary or implied qualification of a representative of the Graduates which the Constitution makers, orin any event the Parliament, could have easily imposed, the learned Judge had really invaded the Legislative sphere. The defect if any, in the law could be removed only by law made by Parliament. 22. We conclude, after considering all the relevant constitutional and statutory provisions relating to the qualifications of a candidate of election from the Graduates constituency of the Legislative Council of the Madras State, that the appellant possesses all the qualifications laid down for such a candidate.

Decision (1 = appeal accepted, 0 = rejected): 1

Explanation:
1[ds]7. The plain and ordinary meaning of the term electorate is confined to the body of persons who elect. It does not contain, within its ambit, the extended notion of a body of persons electing representatives from amongst themselves. Thus, the use of the term electorate, in Art. 171 (3) of our Constitution, could not by itself, impose a limit upon the field of choice of members of the electorate by requiring that the person to be chosen must also be a member of the electorate. The qualifications of the electors constituting the electorate and of those who can represent each electorate, contemplated by the Constitution and then supplemented by Parliament are separately set out for each house12. An important and very noticeable difference between qualifications prescribed by Parliament for the membership of a Legislative Assembly by Section 5 of the Representation of the People Act of 1951 and those for the membership of a Legislative Council by Section 6 of that Act is that, so far as a member of the Legislative Assembly is concerned, he or she has to be an Elector in the Constituency from which he or she stands, but a member of a Legislative Council in a State is not similarly required to be a member of the electorate. All that Parliament says, in Sec.6 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, is that the person to be chosen as a member of the Legislative Council has to be an elector for any Assembly constituency in the State to whose legislative Council he was to be chosen. He has to be ordinarily resident in the State to qualify for nomination. No other qualifications, apart, from those found in Article 173 of the Constitution and S.6 of the Representation of the People Act of 1951, are to be found laid down anywhere. But, an additional qualification was found, by the judgment under appeal before us, to exist by resorting to a presumed legislative intent and then practically adding it to those expressly laid down15. Whatever may have been the opinions of Constitution makers or of their advisers, whose views are cited in the judgment under appeal, it is not possible to say, on a perusal of Article 171 of the Constitution, that the Second Chambers set up in nine States in India were meant to incorporate the principle of what is known as functional or vocatitonal representation which has been advocated by Guild-Socialist and Syndicalist Schools of political thought. Some of the observations quoted above, in the judgment under appeal itself, militate with the conclusions reached there. All that we can infer from our Constitutional provisions is that additional representation or weightage was given to persons possessing special types of knowledge and experienced by enabling them to elect their special representatives also for Legislative Councils. The concept of such representation does not carry with it, as a necessary consequence, the further notion that the representative must also possess the very qualifications of those he represents16. In the case of the Graduates constituency, it is provided in Article 171 (3) (b) that the electors must have held their degrees for at least three years before they become qualified as electors. Thus, in laying down the test of competence of voters of such a constituency, mere possession of degrees by them was not considered sufficient. Moreover, graduates are not an occupational or vocational group but merely a body of persons with an educational qualification. It would, therefore, not be correct to describe the additional representation sought to be given to them as an attempt to introduce the functional or vocational principle. On the face of it, Article 171 appears to be designed only to give a right to choose their representatives to those who have certain types of presumably valuable knowledge and education. If the presumption of their better competence to elect a suitable representative is there, as we think that there must be it would be for the members of such a constituency themselves to decide whether a person who stands for election from their constituency possesses the right type of knowledge, experience, and wisdom which satisfy certain standards. It may well be that the Constitution makers, acting upon such a presumption, had intentionally left the educational qualifications of a candidate for election from the graduates constituency unspecifiedIn the case before us, it could not possibly be said that the question to be dealt with was not known to the legislators. It could not even be said that qualifications of the electors as well as of those to be elected were not matters to which the attention of the law makers, both in the Constituent Assembly and in Parliament, was not specially directed at all or that the omission must be by mere oversight. The provisions discussed above demonstrated amply how legislative attention was paid to the qualifications of the electors as well as of the elected in every case. Hence the correct presumption, in such a case would be that the omission was deliberate21. We think that the language as well as the legislative history of Article 171 and 173 of the Constitution and Section 6 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, enable us to presume a deliberate omission of the qualification that the representative of the Graduates should also be a graduate. In our opinion, no absurdity results if we presume such an intention. We cannot infer, as the learned Judge of the Madras High Court had done, from the mere fact of such an omission and opinions about a supposed scheme of functional representation underlying Article 171 of our Constitution, that the omission was either unintentional or that it led to absurd results. We think that by adding a deemed to be necessary or implied qualification of a representative of the Graduates which the Constitution makers, orin any event the Parliament, could have easily imposed, the learned Judge had really invaded the Legislative sphere. The defect if any, in the law could be removed only by law made by Parliament22. We conclude, after considering all the relevant constitutional and statutory provisions relating to the qualifications of a candidate of election from the Graduates constituency of the Legislative Council of the Madras State, that the appellant possesses all the qualifications laid down for such a candidate.