Judgment

HIDAYATULLAH, C.J.I. :- This is an appeal by the unsuccessful election petitioner against the judgment of the High Court of Rajasthan dated October 10, 1967. The election petition was filed to challenge the election of the first respondent at the Pali Parliamentary Constituency in the Fourth General Elections. At that election seven nomination papers were filed. Two of the candidates withdrew. Amongst them was one R. D. Periwal. There were thus only five contesting candidates. Of these, the first respondent obtained 1,47,509 votes. His closest rival respondent No. 2 (now deceased) obtained 1,21,438 votes. The remaining candidates got a little over thirty thousand votes between them.

2. The election petitioner (appellant here) is an elector of Pali. In his petition he joined the returned candidate and the other four contesting candidates. Many grounds were urged in the petition. The first ground was that the returned candidate or his election agent prompted hatred against the Congress, appealed to religion and sent persons dressed as Sadhus preaching that if Congress was returned to power there would be go-hatya and took pledges or oaths from the voters. The second was that the returned candidate and his election agent were guilty of suppression of true expenses and filed false returns. The third ground was that the candidate or his election agent obtained the services of Government servants & furthering the election of the returned candidate. The last ground was that the returned candidate and his election agent and other persons with the consent of the returned candidate paid and offered bribes between January 13, 1967 to February 14, 1967 to induce the electors directly or indirectly to vote for the returned candidate.

3. The petition was scrutinised and was found to be in order. The returned candidate entered appearance on May 15, 1967 and filed a written statement a month later. He took the objection that thc allegations were vague and lacking in necessary particulars. The High Court thereupon ordered better and fuller particulars on July 2, 1967. The election petitioner was asked to file an application for amendment and a draft of the amended petition. This was done but there were objections.

4. The objections were decided on August 1, 1967. Some of the allegations of corrupt practices were deleted for want of sufficient particulars. The other amendments were allowed. Para 16 of the petition in the amended form read as follows:

"That the respondent No.1 and his election agents Messrs. R. D. Periwal and Shri Lunia and other persons with the consent of the respondent No. 1 paid and offered bribes between 13-1-67 to 20-2-67 with the object of inducing directly or indirectly electors to vote for respondent No. 1.

The following amongst other are some of the instances."

(Instances were mentioned.)

On August 24, 1967 written statement was filed in which an objection was taken that as R. D. Periwal, against whom corrupt practices had been alleged, was not joined as a party, the petition was liable to be dismissed under Section 86 (1) of the Representation of the People Act. This preliminary objection was heard by the Judge on August 29, 1967. Same day an application for amendment of the election petition was filed. It was stated in the election petition that the election petition had gathered the impression that Inder Kumar Lunia was the election agent, from a telegram sent by Luniai that the name of R. D. Periwal in paragraph 16 crept in because of uncertainty and inadvertence and the reference to election agent "came to be made in an omnibus manner . What this statement means is not very clear. However, it was pointed out that there was no intention to make any allegation against R. D. Periwal but two or three allegation of corrupt practice were imputed to Lunia. A request was, therefore, made that the reference to election agent in all the paragraphs charging corrupt practices should be deleted and it was specifically pray