NARBADA PRASAD Vs. CHHAGANLAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal against the judgment, November 30, 1967, of a learned Single Judge of the High Court of Madhya Pradesh at Indore setting aside the election of the appellant to the Khategaon Legislative Assembly Constituency No. 259. The facts on which the petition was based and the judgment of the High Court has been rest , may now be stated.

(2.) At the last General Election to the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly from the Khategaon Constituency there were five contesting candidates. They were the appellant and respondents 2 to 5. The appellant received 9622 votes as against the second respondent who obtained 8030 votes. The other contesting candidates received fewer votes in comparison. The present election petition was filed, not by any of the defeated candidates, but by an elector to the Legislative Assembly Constituency. In the array of the respondents in the High Court one Ram Kishen s/o Lakshmi Narain Deswali was also joined because his nomination paper was rejected by the Returning Officer. A point was made about this rejection in the High Court and we shall come to it in due course.

(3.) The election petition was based on two broad facts. The first was that the nomination paper of Ram Kishen was wrongly rejected and the other fact comprised allegations of corrupt practices on the part of the returned candidate and his election agent. These corrupt practices consisted of oral speeches connected with the Manifesto of the Jan Sangh relating to cow slaughter in India. During the course of the speeches, it was alleged the returned candidate, who belongs to the Jan Sangh and his election agent Ram Niwas Somani made speeches at 19 villages in which they referred to this election manifesto and claimed that the Congress had not abolished cow slaughter in India and on the other hand was promoting it and that the Jan Sangh would stop cow slaughter. They added to these statements, which might have been quite innocuous, two other statements, namely, that to vote for the Congress was to commit the sin of go-hatya and that the Congress candidate Shrimati Manjulabai herself ate beef. There were other allegations regarding exhibition of posters which depicted the Congress as a butcher intent upon slaughtering a cow. This part of the case however, was not accepted in the High Court and we need not say anything about it. The petition therefore succeeded on the two grounds which we have mentioned, namely, that the nomination paper of Ram Kishen was wrongly rejected and that the corrupt practice attributed to the Jan Sangh candidate and his election agent was established.