Case: B. Basavalingappa Vs. D. Munichinnappa

An election was held to the Bangalore South (Scheduled Castes) constituency in February 1962. Four persons stood for election including the appellant and Munichinnappa respondent No. 1, who obtained the highest number of votes and was declared elected. The appellant then filed an election petition challenging the election of respondent No. 1 on a number of grounds. In the present appeal we are concerned only with one ground, namely, that respondent No. 1 was not a member of any of the scheduled castes mentioned in the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 (hereinafter referred to as the Order). Respondent No. 1 claimed that he belonged to the scheduled caste listed as Bhovi in the Order. The appellant on the other hand contender that respondent No. 1 was a Voddar by Caste and that Voddar was not a scheduled caste specified in the Order and consequently respondent No.1 could not stand for election from a scheduled caste constituency. The Election Tribunal held that the caste mentioned as Bhovi in the Order was a sub-caste amongst the Voddars and that only this sub-caste was included in the Order and not the entire Voddar caste. The Tribunal also held that respondent No. 1 did not belong to the sub-caste of Bhovi and, therefore, was not eligible for standing as a candidate from the scheduled caste constituency. Consequently the election was set aside and reelection ordered by the Tribunal.2. Respondent No. 1 went in appeal to the High Court and his contention was that he belonged to the scheduled caste Bhovi mentioned in the order and was, therefore entitled to stand for election from the scheduled caste constituency. The High Court held Voddar caste as such was not included in the Order, but considering the facts and circumstances in existence at the time when the Order was passed in 1950, the Bhovi caste mentioned therein no other than Voddar caste. It, therefore, allowed the appeal holding that respondent No. 1 being a Voddar must be held t be a member of the Bhovi caste mentioned in the Order and dismissed the election petition. The High Court having refused leave to appeal, the appellant got special leave from this Court and that is how the matter has come up before us.

Court's reasoning:
Clearly, therefore, Article 341 provides for a notification and for its finality except when altered by Parliament by law. The argument on behalf of the appellant is based on the provisions of Art. 341 and it is urged that a notification once made is final and cannot even be revised by the President and can only be modified by inclusion or exclusion by law by Parliament. Therefore, in view of this stringent provision of the Constitution with respect to a notification issued under cl. (1) it is not open to anyone to include any caste as coming within the notification on the basis of evidence-oral or documentary- if the caste in question does not find specific mention in the terms of the notification. It is, therefore, urged that the Tribunal was wrong in allowing evidence to show that Voddar caste was the same as the Bhovi caste mentioned in the Order and that the High Court was in error when it held on the basis of such evidence that Voddar caste was the same as the Bhovi caste specified in the Order and therefore, respondent No. 1 was entitled to stand for election because he belonged to Voddar caste which was the same as the Bhovi caste.But that in our opinion does not conclude the matter in the peculiar circumstances of the present case. The difficulty in the present case arises from the fact (which was not disputed before the High Court) that in the Mysore State as it was before the re-organisation of 1956 there was no caste known as Bhovi at all. The order refers to a scheduled caste known as Bhovi in the Mysore State as it was before 1956 and, therefore, it must be accepted that there was some caste which the President intended to include after consultation with the Rajpramukh in the order, when the Order mentions the caste Bhovi as a scheduled caste. It cannot be accepted that the President included the caste Bhovi in the Order though there was no such caste at all in the Mysore State as it existed before 1956. But when it is not disputed that there was no caste specifically known as Bhovi in the Mysore State before 1956, the only course open to Courts to find out which caste was meant by Bhovi is to take evidence in that behalf.If there was a caste known as Bhovi as such in the Mysore State as it existed before 1956, evidence could not be given to prove that any other caste was included in the Bhovi caste. But when the undisputed fact is that there was no caste specifically known as Bhovi in the Mysore State as it existed before 1956 and one finds a caste mention as Bhovi in the order, one has to determine which was the caste which was meant by that word on its inclusion in the Order. It is this peculiar circumstance, therefore, which necessitated the taking of evidence to determine which was the caste which was meant by the word "Bhovi" used in the Order, when no caste was specifically known as Bhovi in the Mysore State before the re-organisation of 1956.Since then it seems that in all Government records the Voddar caste has been known as Boyi, for it is not disputed that Voddar and Vodda are the same. It seems, therefore, reasonable to inter when the President made the Order in 1950 after consultation with the Rajpramukh of Mysore whom be was bound to consult under the Constitution before passing the Order with respect to the State of Mysore that the caste Vodda was included in the Order as Bhovi because of the order of the then Government of Mysore of February 1946.We shall deal with the difference in spelling later but it does appear that the caste Voddar was not mentioned as such in the Order because the name of that caste was changed in 1946 for all Government purposes by the order of the then Government of Mysore. Therefore, if the Order had mentioned the caste as Boyi there would have been no difficulty in holding that it meant the Voddar caste in view of the order of the then Mysore Government of February 1946 to the effect that the Voddars had given up their original name and had changed it to Boyis fromagain there is force in the contention that where the same caste was spelt differently the different spellings have been provided in the Order as illustrated already. But the same difficulty which faced us in considering the question whether Voddar caste was meant by the caste Bhovi included in the Order arises when we consider the difference in spellings, for it is not in dispute that there was no caste known as Bhovi in the Mysore State as it existed in 1950 when the Order was passed. As the President could not have included in the Order a non-existent caste, it means the word "Bhovi relates to some caste in Mysore as it was before 1956 and we have, therefore, to establish the identity of that caste and that can only be done by evidence. In that connection the High Court has held that ever since the order of 1946, the Voddar caste has been variously spelt as Boyi, Bovi, and Bhovi in English, though the Kanada equivalent is one and the same. The High Court, therefore, has not attached any importance to the change in the English spelling in the peculiar circumstances of this case. In this connection attention may be drawn to the notification of the then Government of Mysore dated February 2, 1946 where Voddar caste is spelt in three ways in the same notification; at one place it is spelt as Voddara, at another place as Voddar and at two places as Vodda. It seems, therefore, that we cannot attach undue importance to the spelling in English in this ease when we know that there was no specific caste known as Bhovi in Mysore State as it was before 1956 and we have to determine which was the caste which was meant by the use of that term in the Order. In this connection we may also draw attention to another copy of the same notification which was issued by another department of the Government. In that copy Voddara has been spelt as Vaddara and Boyies as Bovis. It seems to us, therefore, that the High Court was right in the peculiar circumstances of the present case in not attaching any importance to difference in spelling in English, and to treat Bhovis as the same as Bovis. We do not think it necessary to refer to the various census reports, which have been referred to by the Tribunal and the High Court for they only show how the same caste has been differently spelt. In the circumstances, therefore, we agree with the High Court that respondent No. 1 though Voddar by caste belongs to the scheduled caste of Bhovi mentioned in the Order. We may again repeat that we have referred to the evidence in this case only because there was undoubtedly no caste known as Bhovi in the Mysore State as it was before 1956 and we had to find out, therefore, which caste was meant by the word "Bhovi as used in the Order. But for this fact it would not have been open to any party to give evidence to the effect that (for example) caste A mentioned in the Order includes or was the same as caste B where caste A does exist in the area to which the Order applies.