- (1.) This petition under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India seeking the issuance of an appropriate writ quashing the order dated the 24th of August 1964, of the Illaqa Magistrate, Panipat (respondent No. 1) who is the Prescribed Authority under the Gram Panchayat Act, has arisen in these circumstances. In connection with the election to the office of Sarpanch of the Executive Committee of the Gram Sabha of village Assam Khurd which was to be held on the 1st of January, 1964, the petitioner and respondent No. 3 filed their nomination papers before the Returning Officer who, by his order dated the 31st of December, 1963, held the petitioner ineligible for the election on the ground that the latter was then holding the land of the Panchayat as a tenant. The nomination papers filed by the petitioner having been thus rejected, respondent No. 3 was elected Sarpanch. On the 15th of January, 1964, the petitioner filed an election petition before the Prescribed Authority (respondent No. 1) stating therein that he had never been a tenant or a lessee of the Panchayat land and that the rejection of his nomination papers by the Returning Officer was illegal. It was accordingly prayed that the election of respondent No. 3 as Sarpanch be declared void. After considering the evidence produced before him by the parties, the Prescribed Authority arrived at the finding that at the relevant point of time the petitioner was holding the land of the Panchayat as a tenant. It was on the basis of this finding that the impugned order was passed.
(2.) The real attack of the learned counsel for the petition against the impugned order is that the finding just mentioned above is erroneous and that on a proper construction of the oral and documentary evidence produced by the parties before it, the Prescribed Authority should have held that the petitioner was not in possession of any Panchayat land as a tenant at the time when he filed his nomination papers. This attack, I am afraid, is not open to the petitioner inasmuch as this Court, while exercising its writ jurisdiction, does not sit as a Court of appeal, especially on questions of fact, over other Tribunals; and if after going through the evidence produced before the Prescribed Authority, this Court were to come to a conclusion on facts different from that arrived at by that Authority, it would not be open to this Court to strike down the impugned order and substitute therefore its own judgment instead. Of course, if that order was based on no evidence at all or was passed in utter disregard of the evidence available, it could be struck down as untenable in law but that is a situation which does not arise here. I have been taken through the entire impugned order by the learned counsel for the petitioner and find that it does not suffer from any inherent defect of the type such as may render it void or illegal and so far as independent appreciation of the said evidence is concern, I am not prepared to undertake it myself in view of the observations above made by me, no real case of misconstruction of or disregarding evidence having been made out.
(3.) For the reasons stated, the petition fails and is dismissed but with no order as to costs.;