Judgement

BHARGAVA, J. : In 1964, there were eight vacancies in the Rajya Sabha for which members had to be elected from the constituency of the Legislative Assembly of Bihar. The election was to be held on 26the March, 1964. It appears that the Congress Party put up 6 candidates out of the total of 13 candidates who were nominated for these eight vacancies. Two of the candidates withdrew after scrutiny of nomination papers and, consequently, for the actual election there were 6 Congress candidates and 5 others. Amongst these 5 others was the appellant Rajendra Prasad Jain who was standing as an independent candidate. One of the Congress candidates was respondent Sheel Bhadra Yajee. At the election, Rajendra Prasad Jain was declared as one of the elected candidates, while respondent Sheel Bhadra Yajee was unsuccessful. Respondent No. 1, Sheel Bhadra Yajee, then filed an election petition challenging the election of the appellant to the Rajya Sabha. The main ground for challenge was that the appellant had committed the corrupt practice of bribery or offer of bribery in order to secure his election. In the election petition as originally filed, Schedule I contained the names of five persons to whom, it was alleged, bribe had actually been paid by the appellant. Schedule II contained the names of five persons to whom bribe had been offered by the appellant. By a subsequent amendment, three fresh names were added in Schedule I and five in Schedule II. The amendment having been allowed by the Election Tribunal, the petition, at the stage of the trial, contained allegations of payment of bribe to eight persons and of offer of bribe to ten persons. In the actual trial however, evidence was not tendered in respect of some of these allegations. The election Tribunal, after full trial of the petition, held that respondent No. 1 had succeeded in proving that the appellant had given bribes to three of the persons mentioned in Schedule I and had offered bribe to four persons mentioned in Schedule II. The appellant appealed to the High Court at Patna. In the High Court, when the appeal was heard by a Division Bench, one member Mahapatra, J., held that none of the allegations of payment of bribe or of offer of bribe had been proved and was of the view that the appeal should be allowed and the election petition dismissed. The other member, Ramratna Singh, J., agreed with Mahapatra, J., with regard to the three instances of giving bribe to the three persons mentioned in Schedule I and also with regard to the offer of bribe to two of the persons mentioned in Sch. II. With regard to two instances of offer of bribe in Schedule II, he disagreed with Mahapatra, J., and upheld the decision of the Election Tribunal. The two persons in whose cases the offer of bribe was held proved by Ramratna Singh, J., were Shah Mustaq Ahmad and Ram Narain Choudhary who were both members of the Bihar Legislative Assembly and belonged to the Congress Party. Owing to this difference of opinion, the two learned Judges directed that the case may be placed before the Hon ble Chief Justice for reference of the point of difference to another Bench under Article 28 of the Letters Patent. Under the directions of the Chief Justice, the appeal came up before U. N. Sinha, J., who, in both cases, agreed with the view taken by Ramratna Singh, J., and, consequently, in accordance with the view of the majority, the Court ultimately dismissed the appeal holding that the offer of bribe by the appellant to Shah Mustaq Ahmad and Ram Narain Choudhary had been proved. The appellant has now come up in appeal to this Court under certificate granted by the High Court at Patna against this judgment of that Court.

2. In this appeal, three points were urged by Mr. Ved Vyas, learned counsel for the appellant. The first question of law raised was that the Division Bench of the Patna High Court, which first heard the appeal made a direction that the case is to be placed before the Chief Justice for