Untwalia, J. - (1.) This is an appeal under Section 116-A of the Representation of the People Act,1951-hereinafter called the Act by the election petitioner whose petition challenging the election of respondent No. 1 (for brevity the respondent) has been dismissed by the High Court. Eventually the only ground which could be pressed in the High Court to challenge the election of the respondent was that the nomination papers of two persons namely Shri Jagan Nath and Shri Prabha Ram were improperly rejected by the Returning Officer. The High Court framed only two issues for trial and decided them against the appellant. It has held that the nomination papers- both of Jagan Nath and Prabha Ram suffered from defects of substantial character and, therefore, they were rightly rejected by the Returning Officer.
(2.) Jagan Nath filed two nomination papers in the prescribed Form No. 28 prescribed under Rule 4 of the Conduct of the Election Rules 1961 hereinafter referred to as the Rules. In both the papers in the column "His postal address" the only thing written was ''Smalkha Mandi". The Returning Officer rejected both the nomination papers of Jagan Nath on the ground that thecandidate had not given the name of his father and his full address. The name given as Jagan Nath and address as Smalkha Mandi were not sufficient The Returning Officer described it as a technical error fit to be rectified but because there was nobody present on behalf of the candidate at the time of the scrutiny of the nomination papers the rectification could not be made. Hence the nominations were rejected. Following the decisions of this Court in Brijendralal Gupta v. Jwalaprasad. (1960) 3 SCR 650 and in Prahladdas Khandelwal v. Narendra Kumar Salve, (1973) 2 SCR 157 = (AIR 1973 SC 178 ) the High Court has held that the nomination papers suffered from a defect of non-compliance with the requirement of Section 33(1) of the Act and that the defect was of a substantial character. On consideration of the evidence adduced before it, it held: "Thus in the established circumstances of the case, it was manifest that the mention of Smalkha Mandi only, in the nomination papers, was no more than an apology of an address. It was, according to Mr. Joginder Pal Narang's testimony in this Court hopelessly incomplete. To my mind also it was equal to not giving any address at all."
(3.) We concur in the view of the High Court that filling up the column of postal address of the candidate in the nomination paper is necessary . The High Court has referred to several provisions in the Act and the Rules to point out the purpose of supplying the postal address. It appears that the name of the post office concerning Smalkha Mandi, Smalkha village, Model town etc., was Smalkha. The name of the post office was not Smalkha Mandi. On the face of the address of given in the nomination papers there was the defect of incorrect mention of the name of the post office. The name of the District was also not given. It has come in the evidence of the respondent that there were other places of the names at Smalkha and Smalkha Mandi in the States of Haryana and Rajasthan. Even ignoring the defects aforesaid the High Court has noticed on consideration of the evidence and specially of Jagan Nath himself that the postal address given in either of his nomination forms was so very incomplete that no letter addressed to him to that address could possibly be delivered to him. There were several persons of the name of Jagan Nath in Smalkha Mandi, Smalkha village. Jagan Nath was serving at shop of a Sweet Meat Seller, Railway Road, Smalkhs Mandi and was resident of Bharbbujanwali Gali. The interesting part of this case is that Jagan Nath did not file an election petition. It was filed by the brother of an unsuccessful candidate. Eventually Jagan Nath was impleaded as a respondent in the election petition. He filed a written statement and examined himself as R.W.5. His definite case was that until and unless some more details were given in his postal address no letter on that skeleton description as given in the nomination papers could be delivered to him by the postal authorities. Taking the totality of the circumstances the High court has rightly held that no postal address in effect was given on either of the nomination papers of Jagan Nath.;