TEKCHAND Vs. BANWARILAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition by Tekchand under Article 226 of the Constitution praying for a writ of certiorari in connection with the rejection of his nomination paper.

(2.) The petitioner is a resident of Karanpur which is a municipality under the Rajasthan Town Municipalities Act, 1951, 23 of 1951 (hereinafter referred to as the Rajasthan Act). The case of the petitioner is that he stood as a candidate for the municipal elections of the Karanpur municipality, which were scheduled to be held on 5-12-1955, and filed his nomination paper from Ward No. 3 for that purpose. Opposite parties 1 to 3 also filed their nomination papers from the same ward. On the day fixed for the scrutiny of the nomination papers, opposite party 1 Banwarilal objected to the nomination paper of the petitioner on certain grounds which are not material for the purposes of the present application. The Returning Officer who is opposite party 4 accepted this objection and rejected the nomination paper of the petitioner. Consequently, the petitioner has come forward with this petition and he prays that his nomination paper was wrongly rejected by the Returning Officer, and, therefore we should quash that order. The petitioner further stated in his application that, he is entitled to the writ of certiorari because Section 20 of the Rajasthan Act bars a civil suit and the remedy by way of an election petition is only a post-election remedy and it would be no consolation to a person whose nomination paper is wrongly rejected to be told that he must let the election go and then have it set aside by an election petition.

(3.) The application has been opposed by the Returning Officer (opposite party 4) and Banwarilal (opposite party 1) although no written reply has been filed on behalf of the latter. The stand taken by the Returning Officer in his reply is that the nomination paper of the petitioner was rightly rejected (with which aspect of the matter we do not propose to deal as already stated above); and, secondly, that the petitioner has a remedy by way of an election petition, & consequently he is not entitled to any relief by way of a writ of certiorari in the extraordinary Jurisdiction of this Court.