Case: N.P Ponnuswami  Vs. Returning Officer, Namakkal Constituency, Namakkal, Salem Dist. and Four Others

2. The appellant was one of the persons who had filed nomination papers for election to the Madras Legislative Assembly from the Namakkal Constituency in Salem district. On 28-11-1951, the Returning Officer for that constituency took up for scrutiny the nomination papers filed by the various candidates and on the same day he rejected the appellants nomination paper on certain grounds which need not be set out as they are not material to the point raised in this appeal. The appellant thereupon moved the High Court under Art. 226 of the Constitution praying for a writ of certiorari to quash the order of the Returning Officer rejecting his nomination paper and to direct the Returning Officer to include his name in the list of valid nominations to be published. The High Court dismissed the appellants application on the ground that it had no jurisdiction to interfere with the order of the Returning Officer by reason of the provisions of Art. 329 (b) of the Constitution. The appellants contention in this appeal is that the view expressed by the High Court is not correct, that the jurisdiction of the High Court is not affected by Art. 329 (b) of the Constitution and that he was entitled to a writ of certiorari in the circumstances of the case.

Court's reasoning:
Those observations which were made in regard to elections to Local Boards will apply with greater force to elections to legislatures, because it does not require much argument to show that in a country with a democratic Constitution in which the legislatures have to play a very important role; it will lead to serious consequences if the elections are unduly protracted or obstructed. To this aspect of the matter I shall have to advert later, but it is sufficient for the present purpose to state firstly that in England the hardship and inconvenience which may be suffered by an individual candidate has not been regarded as of sufficient weight to induce Parliament to make provision for immediate relief and the aggrieved candidate has to wait until after the election to challenge the validity of the rejection of his nomination paper, and secondly, that the question of hardship or inconvenience is after all only a secondary question, because if the construction put by the High Court on Art. 329 (b) of the Constitution is founded to be correct, the fact that such construction will lead to hardship and inconvenience becomesnotable difference in the language used in Arts. 327 and 328 on the one hand, and Article 329 on the other, is that while the first two articles begin with the words "subject to the provisions of this Constitution", to last article begins with the words "notwithstanding anything in this Constitution". It was conceded at the bar that the effect of this difference in language is what (that ?) whereas any law made by Parliament under Art. 327, or by the State Legislature under Art. 328, cannot exclude the jurisdiction of the High Court under Art. 226 of the Constitution, that jurisdiction is excluded in regard to matters provided for in Art.we have seen, the most important question for determination is the meaning to be given to the word "election" in Art. 329 (b). That word has by long usage in connection with the process of selection of proper representatives in democratic institutions, acquired both a wide and a narrow meaning. In the narrow sense, it is used to mean the final selection of a candidate which may embrace the result of the poll when there is polling or a particular candidate being returned unopposed when there is no poll. In the wide sense, the word is used to connote the entire process culminating in a candidate being declaredseems to me that the word "election" has been used in Part XV of the Constitution in the wide sense, that is to say, to connote the entire procedure to be gone through to return a candidate to the legislature. The use of the expression "conduct of elections" in Art. 324 specifically points to the wide meaning, and that meaning can also be read consistently into the other provisions which occur in Par XV including Art. 329 (b).That the word "election" bears this widewhenever we talk of elections in a democratic country, is borne out by the fact that in most of the books on the subject and in several cases dealing with the matter, one of the questions mooted iswhen the electiondiscussion in this passage makes it clear that the word "election" can be and has been appropriately used with reference to the entire process which consists of several stages and embraces many steps, some of which may have an important bearing on the result of thereference to any treatise on elections in England will show that an election proceeding in that country is liable to be assailed on very limited, grounds, one of them being the improper rejection of a nomination paper. The law with which we are concerned is not materially different, and we find that in S. 100 Representation of the People Act, 1951, one of the grounds for declaring an election to be void is the improper rejection of a nominationmy opinion, to affirm such a position would be contrary to the scheme of Part XV of the Constitution and the Representation of the People Act, which as I shall point out later, seems to be that any matter which has the effect of vitiating an election should be brought up only at the appropriate stage in an appropriate manner before a special tribunal and should not be brought up at an intermediate stage before any Court. It seems to me that under the election law, the only significance which the rejection of a nomination paper has consists in the fact that it can be used as a ground to call the election in question Article 392 (b) was apparently enacted to prescribe the manner in which and the stage at which this ground, and other grounds which may be raised under the law to call the election in question, could be urged. I think it follows by necessary implication from the language of this provision that those grounds cannot be urged in any other manner, at any other stage and before any other Court. If the grounds on which an election can be called in question could be raised at an earlier stage and errors, if any, are rectified, there will be no meaning in enacting a provision like Art. 329 (b) and in setting up a special tribunal. Any other meaning ascribed to the words used in the article would lead to anomalies, which the Constitution could not have contemplated, one of them being that conflicting views may be expressed by the High Court at the pre-polling stage and by the election tribunal, which is to be an independent body, at the stage when the matter is brought up before it.10. In think that a brief examination of the scheme of Part XV of the Constitution and the Representation of the People Act, 1951 will show that the construction I have suggested is the correct one. Broadly speaking, before an election machinery can be brought into operation, there are three requisites which require to be attended to, namely, (1) there should be a set of laws and rules making provisions with respect to all matters relating to, or in connection with, elections, and it should be decided as to how these laws and rules are to be made; (2) there should be an executive charged with the duty of securing the due conduct of elections; and (3) there should be a judicial tribunal to deal with disputes arising out of or in connection with elections. Articles 327 and 328 deal with the first of these requisites, Art. 324 with the second and Art. 329 with the third requisite. The other two articles in Part XV, viz., Arts, 325 and 326 deal with two matters of principle to which the Constitution framers have attached much importance. They are: (1) prohibition against discrimination in the preparation of, or eligibility for inclusion in, the electrol rolls, on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or any of them; and (2) adult suffrage. Part XV of the Constitution is really a code in itself providing the entire ground-work for enacting appropriate laws and setting up suitable machinery for the conduct ofthe Act is a self- contained enactment so far as elections are concerned, which means that whenever we have to ascertain the true position in regard to any matter connected with elections, we have only to look at the Act and the rules made thereunder. The provisions of the Act which are material to the present discussion are Ss. 80, 100, 105 and 170, and the provisions of chap, II of Part IV dealing with the form of election petitions, their contents and the reliefs which may be sought in them. Section 80, which is drafted in almost the same language as Art. 329 (b), provides that "no election shall be called in question except by an election petition presented in accordance with the provisions of this Part." Section 100, as we have already seen, provides for the grounds on which an election may be called in question, one of which is the improper rejection of a nomination paper. Section 105 says that "every order of the Tribunal made under this Act shall be final and conclusive." Section 170 provides that "no civil Court shall have jurisdiction to question the legality of any action taken or of any decision given by the Returning Officer or by any other person appointed under this Act in connection with an election." These are the main provisions regarding election matters being judicially dealt with, and it should be noted that there is no provision any where to the effect that anything connected with elections can be questioned at an intermediatebeing, so, I think it will be a fair inference from the provisions of the Representation of the People Act to state that the Act provides for only one remedy, that remedy being by an election petition to be presented after the election is over, and there is no remedy provided at any intermediateargument however, is completely shut out by reading the Act along with Art. 329 (b). it will be noticed that the language used in that article and in S. 80 of the Act is almost identical, with this difference only that the article is proceeded by the words "notwithstanding anything in this Constitution." I think that those words are quite apt to exclude the jurisdiction of the High Court to deal with any matter which may arise while the elections are inappears that similar language was used in the earlier statutes, and it is noteworthy that it has never been held in England that the improper rejection of a nomination paper can be the subject of a writ of certiorari or mandamus. On the other hand, it was conceded at the bar that the question of improper rejection of a nomination paper has always been brought up in that country before the appropriate tribunal by means of an election petition after the conclusion of the election. It is true that there is no direct decision holding that the words used in the relevant provisions exclude the jurisdiction of the High Court to issue appropriate prerogative writs at an intermediate stage of the election, but the total absence of any such decision can be accounted for only on the view that the provisions in question have been generally understood to have thatthink it can be legitimately stated that if words similar to those used in Art. 329 (b) have been consistently treated in England as words apt to exclude the jurisdiction of the Courts including the High Court, the same consequence must follow from the words used in Art. 329 (b) of the Constitution. The words "notwithstanding anything in this Constitution" give to that article the same wide and binding effect as a statute passed by a sovereign legislature like the English Parliament.15. It may be pointed out that Art. 329(b) must be read as complimentary to Cl. (a) of that article. Clause (a) bars the jurisdiction of the Courts with regard to such law as may be made under Arts. 327 and 328 relating to the delimitation of constituencies or the allotment of seats to such constituencies. It was conceded before us that Art. 329(b) ousts the jurisdiction of the Courts with regard to matters arising between the commencement of the polling and the final selection. The question which has to be asked is what conceivable reason the legislature could have had to leave only matters connected with nominations subject to the jurisdiction of the High Court under Art. 226 of the Constitution. If Part XV of the Constitution is a code by itself, i. e., it creates rights and provides for their enforcement by a special tribunal to the exclusion of all Courts including the High Court, there can be no reason for assuming that the Constitution left one small part of the election process to be made the subject-matter of contest before the High Courts and thereby upset the time-schedule of the elections. The more reasonable view seems to be that Art. 329 covers all "electoralHaving regard to the important functions which the legislatures have to perform in democratic countries, it has always been recognized to be a matter of first importance that elections should be concluded as early as possible according to time-schedule and all controversial matters and the disputes arising out of elections should be postponed till after the elections are over, so that the election proceedings may not be unduly retarded or protracted.(2) In conformity with this principle, the scheme of the election law in this country as well as in England in that no significance should be attached to anything which does not affect the "election;" and if any irregularities are committed while it is in progress and they belong to the category or class which, under the law by which elections are governed, would have the effect of vitiating the "election" and enable the person affected to call it in question, they should be brought up before a special tribunal by means of an election petition and not be made the subject of a dispute before any Court while the election is inThe right to vote or stand as a candidate for election is not a civil right but is a creature of status or special law and must be subject to the limitations imposed by it. (2) Strictly speaking, it is the sole right of the Legislature to examine and determine all matters relating to the election of its own members, and if the Legislature takes it out of its own hands and vests in a special tribunal an entirely new and unknown jurisdiction, that special jurisdiction should be exercised in accordance with the law which creates it.It seems to me that once it is admitted that the same idea can be expressed in different ways and the same phraseology need not be employed in every provision, the argument loses much of its force. But, however, that may be, I think there is a good explanation as to why Art. 329 (b) was drafted as it stands.The rules to which I have referred were apparently framed of the corresponding provisions of the British Acts of 1868 and 1872; and they must have been intended to cover the same ground as the provisions in England have been understood to cover in that country for so many years. If the language used in Art. 329 (b) is considered against this historical background, it should not be difficult to see why the framers of the Constitution framed that provision in its present form and chose the language which had been consistently used in certain earlier legislative provisions and which had stood the test of time.25. And now a word as to why negative language was used in Art. 329 (b). It seems to me that there is an important difference between Art. 71 (1) and Art. 329 (b).Article 71 (1) had to be in an affirmative form, because it confers special jurisdiction on the Supreme Court which that Court could not have exercised but for this article. Article 329 (b), on the other hand, was primarily intended to exclude or oust the jurisdiction of all Courts in regard to electoral matter and to lay down the only mode in which an election could be challenged. The negative form was therefore more appropriate, and, that being so, it is not surprising that it was decided to follow the pre-existing pattern in which also the negative language had beenS. 36, Representation of the People Act, 1951, it is the duty of the Returning Officer to scrutinize the nomination papers to ensure that they comply with the requirements of the Act and decide all objects which may be made to any nomination. It is clear that unless this duty is discharged properly, any number of candidates may stand for election without complying with the provisions of the Act and a great deal of confusion may ensue. In discharging the statutory duty imposed on him, the Returning Officer does not call in question any election. Scrutiny of nomination papers is only a stage, though an important stage, in the election process. It is one of the essential duties to be performed before the election can be completed, and anything done towards the completion of the election proceeding can by no stretch of reasoning be described as questioning the election. The fallacy of the argument lies in treating a single step taken in furtherance of an election as equivalent to election. The decision of this appeal, however turns not on the construction of the single word "election", but on the construction of the compandious expression - "no election shall be called in question" in its context and setting, with due regard to the scheme of Part XV of the Constitution and the Representation of the People Act, 1951. Evidently, the argument has no bearing on this method of approach to the question posed in this appeal, which appears to me to be the only correct method.