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Patel Ahmed Mohammad v. Balwant Singh Rajput & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2018 INSC 887Decided 26 Sept 2018
Civil Appeal arising out of SLP (Civil) Nos. 13040-13042 of 2018
Chief Justice Dipak Misra · Justice A.M. Khanwilkar · Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud

Background

After losing a Rajya Sabha election from Gujarat, the winning candidate (the appellant) faced an election petition alleging corrupt practices and wrongful counting of votes. He filed three separate applications before the Gujarat High Court seeking to have the election petition thrown out at the threshold: on grounds of unremoved "office objections," a defectively served (not "true") copy of the petition, and failure to disclose a cause of action. The High Court dismissed all three applications, and the candidate appealed to the Supreme Court by special leave.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court dealt with each of the three applications separately. On the first (office-objections) ground, it agreed with the High Court that an administrative act of the Registry carries a presumption of regularity, and upheld dismissal of that application. On the second (true-copy) ground, it found the High Court had wrongly recorded that the appellant never produced the actually-served copy of the petition, so it set aside the High Court's order on this point and remanded that specific application for fresh, de novo consideration on its merits. On the third application (no cause of action), the appeal was disposed of with liberty for the appellant to revive his challenge later, contingent on the outcome of the remanded second application. The overall appeal was thus allowed in part, dismissed in part, and partly remanded, with no order as to costs.

Lesson Learnt

A technical objection to an election petition, such as a claim that unremoved "office objections" or a defective copy should doom the case outright, faces a high bar, since routine administrative steps of a court registry are presumed correctly performed unless specifically disproved; and appellate courts will send a factual dispute back for fresh determination rather than decide it themselves on an incomplete record.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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