JUDGMENT

Brijesh Kumar, J.-The defeated candidate in the bye-election held in February, 2000 to the legislative assembly, Madhya Pradesh from Bhojpur assembly constituency, filed an election petition in the High Court of Madhya Pradesh challenging the declaration of the respondent as elected from the aforesaid assembly constituency. The election petition has been dismissed, hence this appeal.

2. Briefly, the facts are that nomination paper of one Bhagwan Singh was rejected at the time of scrutiny on the ground that he had not filled up the proforma prescribed by the Election Commission vide letter dated 28.8.97. The said proforma was required to be filled up to ascertain as to whether the candidate had been convicted or not for any offence mentioned in Section 8 of the Representation of People Act, 1951 (for short the Act ). Interestingly, the candidate, namely, Bhagwan Singh had filed an affidavit that information given in the proforma was correct but the proforma itself was left blank. He had though filled the nomination paper on Form 2-B as prescribed under Rule 4 of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 declaring that the candidate was qualified and also not disqualified for be