JUDGMENT

Shanghai, J.-Appellant Smt. Radba Bai Ananda Rao feels aggrieved against the judgment of the High Court Andhra Pradesh dated September 21 1978, as her election to the sixth, Lok Sabha from the Bhadrachalam (Scheduled Tribes) Parliamentary Constituency has been declared void. She was declared elected on March 21, 1977, but her election was challenged by K. Bapanna Dora, who was one of the contesting candidates at the election, on the ground that she was not a member of a scheduled tribe and had wrongly made a declaration, in her nomination paper, that she belonged to the Koya scheduled tribe notified by the Presidents order under Article 342 (1) of the Constitution to be a scheduled tribe throughout the State of Andhra Pradesh. The appellant denied the contention of the election petitioner and asserted that she belonged to that tribe. She stated that she had successfully contested the two earlier general elections of 1967 and 1971 also, as a candidate belonging to the koya scheduled tribe.

2. Four issues were framed by the trial Court on March 17, J978. K. Bapanna Dora however made an application on April 3, 1978, under Section 109(1) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, for leave to withdraw the election petition. That was allowed, and S. Suvarna Kumar was substituted as the election petitioner. The High Court proceeded with the trial of the election petition and ultimately recorded the finding that the appellant did not belong to the koya community, which was a scheduled tribe, that the acceptance of her nomination paper by the Returning Officer was illegal, and that her election was liable to be declared void. It accordingly made the impugned order and awarded costs to the election petitioner.

3. Although four issues were framed for the trial of the election petition, the trial centered round the main question whether the appellant belonged to the koya scheduled tribe mentioned in the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950. The schedule to the order specifies that the following shall, inter alia, be a scheduled tribe throughout the State of Andhra Pradesh,-

Koya or Goud with its sub-sects-Rajah or Rasha Koyas, Lingadhari Koyas (ordinary-), Kottu Koyas, Bhine koya and Rajkoya.

We are not concerned with any of the sub-sects mentioned in the order, and the short question for consideration is whether the finding of the High Court that the appellant did not belong to the koya tribe is correct.

4. Learned counsel for the parties have relied mainly on the documentary evidence which consists of the entries in the birth and the school registers and have not challenged the admissibility of any of those documents.

5. We shall first take into consideration the two documents on which reliance has been placed for showing that the appellant was a doli, and not a koya. The first of those is entry Ex. A4(c) which states that one Radha Bai, daughter of Gourayya of Venkatapuram, who was born on June 15, 1922, was admitted in class I of the school on February 2, 1927. In column 10 of that entry, the religion of Radha Bai has been entered as doli and it has been urged that that was sufficient to prove that she was not a koya but was a doli which was not a scheduled tribe at all. The second document is Ex. A3 which is an entry from the Daily Birth Register of the year 1930 of Venkatapurarn village showing that the birth of a child to Gourayya was registered on May 14, 1930 and the caste was noted as doli. This entry has also been utilised for the purpose of showing that the appellant did not belong to the koya scheduled tribe as her father was a doli. The appellant has however stated that entry Ex. A4(b), which corresponds to entry Ex. A4(a) except that it is later in point of time inasmuch as it mentions the date of Radha Bais leaving the school as November 3, 1930, does not relate to her. She has in fact stated that she was born in 1927 and not in 1922. Bat even if it were assumed that Exs. A4(a) and A3 go to show that the cas