- (1.) THIS is an appeal by Ghanshyamdas and others against the order of the District Judge of Ganganagar in an election matter.
(2.) THE case relates to the election of members to the Municipal Board of Sadulgarh in the former State of Bikaner. THE election was held sometime before the 1st of Nov. , 1951, and the results were declared on the 1st November, 1951. THE present application was filed by Sagarmal for setting aside the election on the 15th of January, 1952. It was resisted by the present appellants, and one of the grounds taken by the appellants was that the application was barred by limitation. THE appellants claimed that the Rajasthan Town Municipalities Act (No XXIII) of 1951 (hereinafter referred to as the Act) applied and, under sec. 19, sub-sec. (1) of that Act the election petition should have been filed within 10 days after the date of the declaration of the result. As this was not done, they contended that the petition was beyond time. The opposite parties, who, we may mention by the way, have not appeared before us, maintained that rule 37 of the Rules framed under the Bikaner State Municipal Act (No. VI) of 1923 was applicable, and under that rule they could file the election petition within 8 days of the publication of the result in the Government Gazette, and as the result was published in the Rajasthan Gazette on the 5th of January, 1952, they could file the petition up to the 13th of January, 1952. Further, 13th and 14th of January, 1952, were holidays and the petition was made on the 15th of January taking advantage of sec. 4 of the Limitation Act and was therefore within time. The District Judge has come to the conclusion that rule 37 applies and has held that the application is within time. After this decision the District Judge obviously intended to go on with the decision of the election petition, but, in the meantime, the present appeal was filed, and the record was sent for with the result that the election petition is still pending before the District Judge. We are of opinion that it is not necessary for us at this stage to decide the question of limitation raised in this case, as we have come to the conclusion that no appeal lies to this Court at the stage at which the proceedings are in the court of the District Judge. In this connection, we may refer to sec. 19, sub-sec. (2) of the Act. The relevant portion of that section is as follows : - "the Judge may, after such enquiry as he deems necessary, and subject to the provision of sub-sec. (3), pass an order confirming or amending the declared result of the election, or setting the election aside. . . . . . An appeal shall lie to the High Court from the order of the Judge, provided it is only on a point on law and is preferred within one month from the date of such order exclusive of the time requisite for obtaining a copy of the order. " The question is whether the Act contemplates an appeal to this Court against interlocutory orders, while the election petition is pending in the District Judge's Court. Reading the relevant portions of sec. 19 (2), which we have set out above, it is quite clear that the appeal to the High Court is from the order of the Judge, which must be an order confirming or amending the declared result of the election or setting the election aside. The earlier part of sec. 19 (2) uses the words "an order", and these' words are qualified by the words "confirming or amending the declared result of the election or setting the election aside". Then comes the provision as to appeals and that provisions is that an appeal shall lie from the order of the Judge, provided it is only on a point of law and is preferred within one month. We wish to emphasise the word "the" which appears before the word "order". The words "the order" obviously relate to the kind of order which has been mentioned in the earlier part of the section namely an order confirming or amending the declared result or setting the election aside. If the intention was that any order of the Judge, provided it was on a point of law, was open to appeal at any stage of the proceedings, we should have found the word 'any' before the word 'order' in the part referring to appeal, and not the word "the". We are, therefore, clearly of the opinion that sec. 19 (2) only contemplates an appeal to this Court after the District Judge has disposed of the election petition in one of three ways, namely (1) by an order confirming the result of the election (2) by an order amending the result of the election, (3) by an order setting the election aside. These are the only three orders against which appeal is provided to this Court. All other orders in the nature of interlocutory orders are clearly not appealable under sec. 19 (2 ). We may point out that this view is in consonance with the desirability of disposing of election petitions as early as possible. There is bond to be delay in the disposal of election petitions, if it were possible to file appeals to this Court from interlocutory proceedings. We have, therefore, on hesitation in coming to the conclusion that sec. 19 (2) contemplates an appeal to this Court only from the three kinds of orders which we have mentioned above and from none others, We may add that an order of kind before us can always be challenged when one of the three kinds of orders mentioned above is finally passed. In this view of the matter, we are of opinion that the appeal is premature. We hereby dismiss the appeal, but as the opposite parties have not appeared, we order the appellants to bear their own costs of this Court. Costs in the trial court will abide the final result. .;