- (1.) What troubles us in this appeal, coming before a bench of 5 Judges on a referenceunder Article 145 (3) of the Constitution, is not the profusion ofcontroversial facts nor the thorny bunch of lesser law, but the possibleconfusion about a few constitutional fundamentals, finer administrative normaeand jurisdictional limitations bearing upon elections. What are thosefundamentals and limitations We will state them, after mentioning brieflywhat the writ petition, from which this appeal, by special leave, has arisen,is about.
(2.) Every significant case has an unwritten legend and indeliblelesson. This appeal is no exception, whatever its formal result. Themessage, as we will see at the end of the decision, relates to the pervasivephilosophy of democratic elections which Sir Winston Churchill vivified inmatchless words:at the bottom of all tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking intoa little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper noamount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelmingimportance of the point. If we may add, the little, large Indian shall not be hijacked from thecourse of free and fair elections by mob muscle methods, or subtle perversionof discretion by men 'dressed in little, brief authority'. For 'be you everso high, the law is above you'.
(3.) The moral may be stated with telling terseness in the words ofwilliam Pitt: 'where laws end, tyranny begins'. Embracing both thesemandates and emphasizing their combined effect is the elemental law andpolitics of Power best expressed by Benjamin Disraeli :i repeat. . that all power is a trust that we. are accountable for its exercise that, from the people and for the people, all springs, and all must exist. Aside from these is yet another, bearing on the play of natural justice, itsnuances, nonapplications, contours, colour and content. Natural justiceis no mystic testament of Judgemade juristics but the pragmatic, yetprincipled, requirement of fairplay in action as the norm of a civilisedjusticesystem and minimum of good government crystallised clearly inour jurisprudence by a catena of cases here and elsewhere.;