Judgment

MUKHERJEA, J. : This appeal, which has come before us on special leave, is directed against the judgment and order of the Election Tribunal, Jabalpur at Nagpur, dated the 30th April 1953, whereby the Tribunal declared the election held on the 29th December 1951, for the double member Lakhnadon Legislative Assembly Constituency, to be wholly void under section 100 (1) (c) of the Representation of the People Act (hereinafter called The Act ).

2. To appreciate the contentions that have been raised by the parities to this appeal, it would be necessary to state briefly the material facts. The Laknadon Legislative Assembly Constituency in Madhya Pradesh is a double member constituency, one of the seats in which is reserved for scheduled tribes. The appellant and respondent Nos. 1, 3, 5 and 7 were duly nominated candidates for the general seat in the said constituency, while respondents Nos. 2, 4 and 6 were nominated for the reserved seat.

No objection was taken before the Returning Officer in respect of the nomination of either the appellant or respondent No. 2 Vasant Rao. Out of these eight candidates, respondent Nos. 5, 6 and 7 withdrew their candidature within the prescribed period under section 37 of the Act and the actual contest at the election was between the remaining five candidates, namely, the appellant and respondents Nos. 1 to 4. The votes secured by these five candidates at the polling were found to be as follows :

(1) The Appellant (General) .. 18,627

(2) Respondent No. 1 (General) .. 7,811

(3) Respondent No. 2 (Reserved) .. 14,442

(4) Respondent No. 3 (Reserved) .. 7,877

(5) Respondent No. 4 (General) .. 6,604

Accordingly the appellant and respondent No. 2 were declared elected to the General and Reserved seat respectively, under section 66 of the Act, and the results were duly published in the Madhya Pradesh Gazette on 8th of February 1952. On the 14th of May 1952 the respondent No. 1 Raghuraj Singh filed an election petition against the appellant and the other respondents, under section 81 of the Act, praying that the said election to the Lakhnadon Legislative Assembly Constituency be declared wholly void or in the alternative election of Vasant Rao and/or that of the appellant Durga Shankar Mehta be declared void.

There was a string of allegations made in the petition accusing the appellant of various corrupt practices in the matter of securing votes but none of these are material for our present purpose, as the Tribunal, by a majority, held these allegations to be unfounded and not supported by proper evidence. The substantial ground upon which the petitioner sought to assail the validity of the election was, that the respondent No. 2 Vasant Rao, who was declared duly elected to the Reserved seat in the said constituency was, at all material times, under 25 years of age and was consequently not qualified to be chosen to fill a seat in the Legislative Assembly of a State under Article 173 of the Constitution.

This allegation was found to be true by the majority of the Tribunal & by its judgment dated the 30th of April 1953 the Tribunal came to the conclusion that the act of the Returning Officer in accepting the nomination of Vasant Rao, who was disqualified to be elected a member of the State Legislature under the Constitution, amounted to an improper acceptance of nomination within the meaning of section 100 (1) (c) of the Act and as the result of the election was materially affected thereby, the whole election must be pronounced to be void. It is the propriety of this decision that has been challenged before us in this appeal.

3. Mr. Hazarnavis appearing for the respondent No.1 before us, took a preliminary point challenging the competency of the appeal. It is contended by the learned counsel, that Article 329(b) of the Constitution ousts the jurisdiction of all ordinary courts in election disputes and provides expressly that no election to either House of Parliament or to either House of the Legislature of