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Judgment
S. A. Bobde, J.—Rule, returnable forthwith. The Learned Counsel for the respective respondents waive service. Heard finally by consent of parties.
In both these petitions, the petitioners have challenged Act No. XXVI of 2011 by which interalia, the provisions of section 5 of the Bombay Provincial Municipal Corporations Act, 1949 and section 10 of the Maharashtra Municipal Councils, Nagar Panchayats and Industrial Townships Act, 1965 have been amended. The amending sections read as follows:
In section 5 of the Bombay Provincial Municipal Corporations Act, 1949, in sub-section (3), for the words "elect only one Councillor" the words "elect as far as possible two Councillors but not less than two and not more than three Councillors, and each voter shall, notwithstanding anything contained in this Act, be entitled to cast the same number of votes, as the number of Councillors to be elected in his ward" shall be substituted.
In section 10 of the Maharashtra Municipal Councils, Nagar Panchayats and Industrial Townships Act, 1965, for sub-section (2), the following sub-section shall be substituted, namely :
(2) Each of the wards shall elect as far as possible four Councillors but not less than three and not more than five Councillors, and each voter shall, notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (2) of section 14, be entitled to cast the same number of votes, as the number of Councillors to be elected in his ward.
The challenge is to the amendments which provide for the election of two or more councillors from the same ward instead of one councillor as provided earlier in the local bodies governed by then two enactments. Before the amendment section 5(3) of the BPMC Act provide that each of the wards shall elect only one councillor. Sub section (2) of section 10 of Maharashtra Municipal Councils, Nagar Panchayats and Industrial Townships Act, 1965 also contained a similar provision that each of the ward shall elect only one councillor.
According to Mr. Prakash Ambedkar, the Learned Counsel for the petitioner in writ petition no. 7567 of 2011 the impugned amendment which allows the creation of multi member constituencies in the same ward is violative of Article 243R of the Constitution of India, which reads as follows:
243R. Composition of Municipalities.-(1) Save as provided in clause (2), all the seats in a Municipality shall be filled by persons chosen by direct election from the territorial constituencies in the Municipal area and for this purpose each Municipal area shall be divided into territorial constituencies to be known as wards.
(2) The legislature of a State may, by law, provide-
(a) for the representation in a Municipality of-
(i) persons having special knowledge or experience in Municipal administration;
(ii) the members of the House of the People and the members of the Legislative Assembly of the State representing constituencies which comprise wholly or partly the Municipal area;
(iii) the members of the Council of States and the members of the Legislative Council of the State registered as electors within the Municipal area;
(iv) the Chairpersons of the Committees constituted under clause (5) of article 243S: Provided that the persons referred to in paragraph
(i) shall not have the right to vote in the meetings of the municipality;
(b) the manner of election of the Chairperson of a Municipality.
On a plain reading however, we find nothing in the creation of multi member constituencies as violative of the said Article since the said Article merely provides for the filling up of seats in the municipalities by persons chosen by direct election from the territorial constituencies. There is nothing in the term "direct election" which posits a single member constituency only. Neither is it permissible as submitted by Mr. Ambedkar to import the requirement of the composition of the House of the People under Article 81 of the Constitution of India to the elections to local bodies under the Panchayat Raj. It is true that the Lok Sabha Constituencies are single member constituencies i.e. only one member of Parliament is elected from each constituency. There is however nothing in the law which requires that only one member should be elected from a ward at municipal election. Indeed the State legislature in its wisdom may while making a law provide for a multitude of members to be elected from a particular ward. The submission on behalf of the petitioners cannot be accepted. We also find that the reliance placed by Shri Ambedkar on observations of the Supreme Court in R.C. Poudyal; Somnath Poudyal; Nandu Thapa; Roop Raj Rai vs. Union of India 1193 Law (SC) 637, in paragraph 201 of the judgment have no application to the present case. In the said observations the Supreme Court disapproved the formation of separate electorates. The Supreme Court referred to the history of the proposal of separate electorates such as electorates of Muslim, Anglo Indians etc. and after referring to the rejection of such electorates proposed in the communal award of 1932 and the observations of the advisory committee recommended elections to the Central and Provincial Legislatures on the basis of joint electorate. The Supreme Court observed as follows:
The Advisory Committee in its report dated 8/08/1947 has stated :
The first question we tackled was that of separate electorates; we considered this as being of crucial importance both to the minorities themselves and to the political life of the country as a whole. By an overwhelming majority, we came to the conclusion that the system of separate electorates must be abolished in the new Constitution. In our judgment, this system has in the past sharpened communal differences to a dangerous extent and has proved one of the main stumbling blocks to the development of a healthy national life. It seems specially necessary to avoid these dangers in the new political conditions that have developed in the country and from this point of view the arguments against separate electorates seem to us absolutely decisive. We recommended accordingly that all elections to the central and provincial Legislatures should be held on the basis of joint electorates.
No question of separate electorates arise in this case merely because of the creation of multi member wards. The argument is therefore rejected.
It was also contended by Mr. Ambedkar that the State Legislature does not have the power to confer an electoral right on a citizen of India and therefore also does not have power to change the nature of electoral right granted by the Constitution of India. In other words, according to the Learned Counsel since Parliament, has, under the Constitution, provided for one vote to one person, the State Legislature cannot provide more than one vote to one person in election to local bodies. The impugned Amendments are enacted in a law relating to local government under Entry 5 of List II of the Constitution of India, which reads as follows:
Local government, that is to say, the constitution and powers of municipal corporations, improvement trusts, district boards, mining settlement authorities and other local authorities for the purpose of local self-government or village administration.
It is settled law that the legislative entries are fields of legislation and receive the widest construction unless their impact is cut down by competing entities. Such entires are to be construed liberally and in their widest amplitude vide The State of Madras Vs. Gannon Dunkerley and Co., (Madras) Ltd., . This view has been consistent right upto the decision in Welfare Assocn. A.R.P., Maharashtra and Another Vs. Ranjit P. Gohil and Others, . The submission is therefore rejected.
At this juncture, it would be important to note that a Division Bench of this Court has already upheld the validity of the amendment challenged by the petitioners in these matters by the judgment in Rajkumar s/o. Marotrao Patait vs. The State of Maharashtra & Ors. in Writ Petition No. 4855 of 2011 where this Court per: Gavai & Joshi, JJ have rejected a challenge to the said amendment. It is therefore strictly not necessary to consider the present challenge on different grounds in view of the following discussion of the Supreme Court in Kesho Ram and Co. and Others etc. Vs. Union of India (UOI) and Others, :
Before we consider the submissions made on behalf of the tenants we would like to point out that some of the tenants who were unsuccessful before this Court in Punjab Tin Supply Company case, have again filed petitions challenging the validity of Section 3 and the impugned notification on additional grounds. In our opinion the petitions by such tenants are not maintainable as the same are barred by principles of res judicata. Once the petitioners challenged the validity of the impugned notification dated September 24, 1974 in earlier proceedings they ought to have raised all the grounds which could have been raised in impugning the validity of Section 3 and the notification, if they failed to raise a ground in earlier petition they cannot raise that ground now in the present proceedings. Finality in litigation and public policy both require that a litigant should not be permitted to challenge validity of the provisions of the Act or notification at different times on different grounds. Once petitioners'' challenge to Section 3 and the impugned notification was considered by the court and the validity of the same was upheld it must be presumed that all grounds which could validly be raised were raised and considered by the court. Learned Counsel for the petitioners urged that the questions which are being raised in the present proceedings were neither raised nor considered by this Court in Punjab Tin Supply Company case, therefore it is open to them to question the validity of Section 3 and the Notification dated September 24, 1974. This submission is contrary to the principles of res judicata and it further ignores the binding effect of a decision of this Court under Article 141 of the Constitution. The binding effect of a decision of this Court does not depend upon whether a particular argument was considered or not, provided the point with reference to which the argument is advanced subsequently was actually decided in the earlier decision, see Smt. Samavanti v. State of Punjab, T. Govindaraja Mudaliar v. State of Tamil Nadu and Anil Kumar Neotia v. Union of India. It is therefore no longer open to the petitioner-tenants to challenge the validity of Section 3 of the Act and the impugned Notification dated September 24, 1974 on the ground that some points had not been urged or considered in Punjab Tin Supply Company case. On the principles of res judicata, and also in view of Article 141 of the Constitution, the law declared by this Court in Punjab Tin Supply Company case is binding on the petitioners. But even otherwise the submissions made on their behalf in impugning the validity of Section 3 and the Notification dated September 24, 1974 are devoid of any merit as we shall presently discuss the same.
In writ petition no. 10354 of 2011 the petitioner has also challenged the final notification dated 15.11.2011 published on 16.11.2011 u/s 5(3) of the BPMC Act making changes in the draft notifications after considering objections to the ward layout. The Municipal Commissioner issued a draft notification dated 25.8.2011 proposing the ward layout of the number of wards and their area into which the municipal area of Pune would be divided and also specifying the wards reserved for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and backward class citizens for the ensuing elections to the municipal corporation. These elections are held under the provisions of the BPMC Act. In the notification ward nos 34 and 28 which are adjacent to each other were shown as having a specific area within specific boundaries. In the final notification issued on 16.11.2011 a triangular area in ward no. 34 was shown as deleted from ward no. 24 and shown in ward no. 28. Earlier under the draft notification the population of ward no. 34 was more than that of ward no. 28 by 1505 as a result of the deletion of the triangular portion from ward no. 34 and its addition to ward no. 28 the population of ward no. 28 has increased over ward no. 34 by 3432. According to the petitioner this has been done by the respondents without there being any objection from any person as to the area of the ward and has resulted in arbitrary rejection of the objections which some citizens had made for inclusion of their area in ward no. 28.
Each city a Municipal area must be divided into wards for the purpose of ward election of councillors, the number of boundaries of which being approximately the same. This is laid down by section 5(3) which reads as follows:
The [State Election Commissioner] shall, from time to time, by notification in the Official Gazette, specify for each City the number and boundaries of the wards into which such City shall be divided for the purpose of the ward election of councillors [ so that, as far as practicable, all wards shall be compact areas and the number of persons in each ward according to the latest census figures shall approximately be the same. Each of the wards shall elect only one Councillor:-
Provided that, no notification issued under sub-section (3), whether before or after the commencement of the Maharashtra Municipal Corporations, Municipal Councils, Nagar Panchayats and Industrial Townships (Third Amendment) Act, 1995 (Mah. XI of 1996), shall have effect except for the general election held next after the date thereof and for subsequent elections.
The section requires the ward to be compact areas and requires all the wards to be approximately of the same size and further requires that the number of person in each ward should be the same as far as possible.
According to the petitioner there was no reason for the respondents to add the triangular area from ward no. 34 as proposed in the draft notification to ward no. 28 in the final notification since there was no objection or demand from any one to that effect. This is disputed on facts since it is pointed out in the affidavit of Mr. D. M. Kaned, Under Secretary, State Election Commission, that objections were raised by Shri Navnath Namdeo Jadhav and Shri Shyam Deshpande that the boundaries of the ward no. 28 and 34 may be changed on the basis of main roads. The said persons were heard by the State Election Commissioner. Thereafter report from the office of the Municipal Corporation was called and the office of the Municipal Corporation was also directed to submit the detailed report in respect of geographical contiguity, population of the concerned area in case the changes are made and accordingly the report was submitted. It thus appears that the change has been effected because there were in fact objections and suggestions from people. It is further submitted on behalf of the respondents that the triangular area has been removed from ward no. 34 and included in ward no. 28 because it was convenient to do so. The said triangular area which has been removed from ward no. 34 and included in ward no. 28 is bounded on two sides by two roads and apparently it is more convenient to have the area between these two roads included in ward no. 28 for the purpose of convenient management of the wards and polling. We see no reason to interfere with a decision which is taken due to such reasons. These are matters which must be left to the discretion of the authorities who are entrusted with the job of conducting the elections particularly if there is no breach of any provision of law or malafide alleged and proved. Moreover there seems nothing illegal in the fact that in the draft notification the population of ward no. 34 was more than that of ward no. 28 by 1505 and now in the re-arranged ward the population of ward no. 28 is more by 3432. Clause 6 of the guidelines framed by the State Election Commission dated 16.8.2011 reads as follows:
While formation of wards under this procedure, the number of population found after dividing total population of Municipal Corporation by total number of Municipal Councilors to be elected be multiplied by number of members of such wards (2 or 3 as the case may be) and thus found population shall be considered as a ratio of population for a ward. However, since it is not practicable to maintain equal number of population in all the wards, a ward of 10 percent more or 10 percent less of the population ratio can be formed.
It clearly envisages that the population of two wards cannot be exactly the same and therefore permits a difference in population to the extent of 10%. It is not in dispute that the figure of 3432 by which the population of ward no. 28 is more than that of ward no. 34 is less than 10%. In this view of the matter, we see no merit in this submission, which is hereby rejected.
In the result, Rule is discharged without any order as to costs.