Judgement

HEGDE, J. :- These appeals by special leave arise from the decision of Andley J. (Delhi High Court) permitting inspection of the ballot papers polled during the last general election to the Lok Sabha held last March in the South Delhi Constituency and the Delhi-Sadar Constituency.

2. The appellants are the successful candidates. They contested in the two constituencies mentioned earlier on behalf of the ruling Congress party. Their symbol was cow and calf. Their nearest rivals were the Jan Sangh nominees whose symbol was Deepak. The appellants were declared elected. The unsuccessful Jan Sangh candidates have challenged the validity of the election of the appellants.

3. The main ground pleaded in support of the election petition was that the ruling party had rigged the election. The process adopted in rigging the election, according to the election petitioners is a somewhat complicated one. That process was explained to us thus; Millions of ballot papers were chemically treated; the symbol of the congress candidates in those ballot papers was mechanically stamped by using invisible ink. As a result of the chemical treatment of those ballot papers, the mark put at the time of the polling disappeared after a few days and the stamping mechanically placed earlier emerged. The suggestion was that this was done as a result of a conspiracy between the ruling party and the Election Commission. To carry out the design in question, we were told, that quite contrary to the earlier practice, the Election Commission instructed the Returning Officers to forward to Delhi a substantial number of ballot papers of each constituency, ostensibly for the purpose of scrutiny but really for the purpose of carrying out the design mentioned earlier. According to them, in place of the ballot papers received, the Returning Officers were supplied with the ballot papers chemically treated and mechanically stamped. Those ballot papers formed a part of the ballot papers used at the election. It was further said that in furtherance of the above design, the Election Commission made two alterations in the practice followed earlier. Firstly it provided a larger interval between the date of polling and the date of counting and secondly by precipitate alteration of a rule it provided for mixing up of the ballot papers of various booths and rotating them in drums. We were further told that these innovations were introduced so that the chemical treatment of the ballot papers may have the desired effect.

4. The election petitioners do not claim to have any direct evidence to support their version. They seek to prove their version primarily on the basis of the examination of the ballot papers. But to probabilise their version, they have put forward various circumstances. They have filed affidavits of two persons who claim to have been present at the time of counting. They supported the allegations in the petitions seeking inspection regarding the facts said to have been observed at the time of counting. In those petitions it was alleged that at the time of the counting, it was noticed that the colour of a large number of ballot papers was different from the colour of the other ballot papers; stamping of the symbols in those ballot papers was uniform, at an identical spot in each of those ballot papers, the stamp were uniform in density and they looked bright and fresh. Those features were quite dissimilar to those found in the other papers including those containing votes in favour of the defeated candidates. The election petitioners in this connection referred to the remours prevailing about the rigging of the election, the landslide victory of the ruling party which according to them was wholly unexpected and finding of huge quantity of unused ballot papers in a godown in Chandigarh. The material facts supporting the allegation of rigging are those said to have been observed at the time of the counting. In addition they also pointed out the changes made by the