Balak Ram vs The State of Punjab and Others

Shamsher Bahadur, J.—The petitioner Balak Ram has challenged the order of the prescribed authority passed on 25th of May, 1964, setting aside this election as a Panch of the Gram Panchayat, Gondar, to which office he was elected on 29th of December, 1963.

Gajje Singh, the fifth respondent, being a defeated candidate in the election of a Panch to the Gram Panchayat Gondar held on 29th of December, 1963, presented an election petition to the prescribed authority u/s 3-B of the Punjab Gram Panchayat Act, as amended, on the ground that the petitioner was disqualified to stand as a candidate under clause (f) of sub-section (5) of section 6 of the Gram Panchayat Act, according to which "no person who is not a member of the Sabha and who....

(f) has been notified as disqualified for appointment in public service except on medical grounds, or....

shall be entitled to stand for election as or continue to be a Sarpanch or Panch." It is common ground that the petitioner was a head watchman in village Gondar and was removed from this office by order of the District Magistrate, Karnal, passed on 13th of December, 1960. In this order, the District Magistrate expressed dissatisfaction with the work of the petitioner as his activities had created factions. The operative portion of the order is to this effect:

I, therefore, order his removal from the post of the watchman and thus automatically from the post of the head watchman. A new watchman should be recommended to be appointed in this place and a recommendation be asked also for promotion of some watchman as the head watchman.

This order makes no mention of the "disqualification for appoinment" which disables a person from standing for the election under clause (f). There has consequently been no occasion for notifying the disqualification envisaged in this clause.

It has been contended by Mr. Anand Swaroop, the learned counsel for the petitioner, and in my opinion rightly, that the order of removal per se cannot be regarded as an automatic order of disqualification as required in clause (f) of sub-section (5) of section 6 of the Gram Panchayat Act. It is axiomatic that the disabling and disqualifying provisions in statutes relating to elections must be strictly construed. The legislature must be intended to have confined the disqualification or the disablement strictly in terms of the language of such provisions in the statute. To say that a disqualification must be deemed to have been intended by the District Magistrate in the order of removal would be to add something in the disabling provision which is not there. It is not for this Court to legislate about the intention of the disabling clause which has to be kept strictly within its statutory ambit. Mr. Sachar, the learned counsel for the fifth respondent Gajje Singh, submits that the subsequent appointment of the petitioner to another post under the Government and his resignation therefrom should be read as a disqualification by inference There is nothing in the orders to spell out any intention to disqualify the petitioner when he was removed by the District Magistrate in the first instance or when his resignation from another job was accepted subsequently. It is to be observed that disqualification has to be specific and indeed has also to be notified to make the disablement of a candidate effective.

Another argument which has been urged on behalf of the State Government may briefly be adverted. It is submitted that the disqualification need not be notified. This argument would be available only if the disqualification has otherwise been made and it is only the notification of it which is lacking, There is no disqualification prescribed or by implication involved in the order of removal and consequently the question of its notification does not arise. It may be that the absence of notification is not a decisive factor in holding that a person has been disqualified. In the present instance, however, the petitioner had never been disqualified although he had been removed from service.

In this view of the matter, this petition must succeed and the order of the prescribed authority quashed. The petitioner is entitled to his costs of this petition.