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Tankadhar Tripathy v. Dipali Das

Civil Appeal · 2025 INSC 1017Decided 22 Aug 2025
C.A. No.-011017-011017 - 2025 (arising out of SLP(C) No. 12491 of 2025)
Justice Surya Kant · Justice Joymalya Bagchi

Background

After losing the 2024 Odisha Assembly election from the Jharsuguda constituency by 1,333 votes, the runner-up candidate filed an election petition in the Orissa High Court alleging that the winning candidate had concealed his criminal record and assets, and that discrepancies in EVM identification numbers had invalidated thousands of votes. The winning candidate asked the High Court to throw out the petition at the outset, arguing among other things that it was not accompanied by a properly completed Form 25 affidavit required for allegations of "corrupt practices." The High Court refused to dismiss the petition and gave the petitioner three weeks to file a corrected affidavit, prompting this appeal to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court reaffirmed settled law that a Form 25 affidavit defect in an election petition is curable and does not automatically make the petition invalid, provided there is "substantial compliance" with the requirement: a stricter, all-or-nothing approach from an older 2000 judgment has since been superseded by more recent rulings favoring a liberal, curable approach. However, the Court found that the High Court's order did not properly explain what specific defects existed in the affidavit or whether they amounted to substantial compliance, so it sent the matter back to the High Court to conduct that analysis properly and decide whether the defect can be, and was, cured within the law's time limits.

Lesson Learnt

A technical defect in the format of a supporting affidavit will usually not kill an election petition outright, courts favour deciding such disputes on their merits rather than on paperwork technicalities, but the deciding court must still explain clearly why it considers a defect curable rather than treating that conclusion as automatic.

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

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