- (1.) THIS is an appeal by Shri Rewachand and Shri Keshavsingh, election petitioners, under Section 116-A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 (Act No. 43 of 1951, hereinafter called the Act) against the judgment and order of the Election tribunal, Jodhpur, dated the 29th November, 1963, dismissing their election petition.
(2.) THE appellants and respondents Nos. 1 to 8 stood up as candidates for election to the Rajasthan Vidhan Sabha from the Jodhpur City 1 Assembly Constituency at the General Election held in 1962. The poll took place on the 23rd February, 1962, as a result of which Shri Anand Singh, the contesting respondent was declared successful. This led to the institution of an election petition by the present appellants which was dismissed by the order under appeal. We consider, it unnecessary to set out the allegations on which the election petition was founded, for the purposes of the present judgment as certain preliminary objections have been raised before us on behalf of the contesting respondent as to the maintainability of the appeal, and some of these, in our considered opinion, go to the very root thereof and must result in its dismissal.
(3.) THE principal objections raised before us may be summarised as follows : (1) The appeal is barred by time, and, therefore, it shoud be dismissed as such; (2) The appeal has not been filed in accordance with certain Rules of this court inasmuch as (a) it was filed without being accompanied by. any paper-books resulting in breach of Rule 247-E, and in this connection it was further contended that (i) the extension of two months' time that was obtained by the appellants from the Court for filing the paper-books was so obtained on entirely false and untenable grounds and that this amounted to an abuse of the process of the Court and the extension granted should be revoked leading to the dismissal of the appeal on this ground alone; (ii) even so, the paper-books were not supplied within the time so allowed, and no further application for extension of time was made; (iii) eventually only four paper-books were filed on the 27th March, 1964, although according to the rule mentioned above, as many paper books were to be supplied as the number of the parties to be served together with two extra copies for the use of the court, that is, ten paper-books had to be supplied in all; (b) even the four paper-books which were supplied by the appellants on the 27th March, 1964, did not contain copies of the memorandum of appeal and this has led to the failure to comply with Clause (f) of Rule 247-F; and (c) no certificate as to the correctness of the translation and/or typing of the paper-books was furnished by the advocate of the appellants resulting in the breach of Rule 247-H. The certificate was not supplied upto the date when the arguments on the preliminary points began, on the 31st July, 1964, and the certificate which was supplied later on the 4th August, 1964, when the arguments had almost completed was not correct, and it is contended that the paper-books supplied are still incomplete inasmuch as statements of some ten witnesses produced by the appellants are not fully incorporated in the paper-books that have been furnished. ;