JUDGMENT

Chelameswar, J.-Leave granted

2. The appellant herein was declared elected to the 15th Lok Sabha from No.4 New Delhi Lok Sabha Constituency in the election held in the year 2009.

3. Challenging the election of the appellant herein, a voter of the said constituency, filed an election petition No.20 of 2009 in the Delhi High Court. The challenge is on the ground of commission of corrupt practices falling under section 123(1),(2),(5),(6),(7) read with section 127(a) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 (hereinafter referred to as “the Act”). The election petitioner chose to implead only the Returning Officer of the No.4 New Delhi Parliamentary Constituency and the appellant herein as respondents to the election petition.

4. The appellant herein filed Interlocutory Application No. 13851 of 2009 invoking Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (hereinafter referred to as “the CPC”) praying that the election petition be dismissed in compliance with the mandate contained in section 86 of the Act, which stipulates “the High Court shall dismiss an election petition which does not comply with the provisions of section 81 or section 82 or section 117”. The said I.A., was dismissed by an order dated 30-05-2011. Hence, the Appeal.

5. The substance of the objections raised by the appellant herein in the abovementioned interlocutory application is that the election petition filed by the 2nd respondent herein is liable to be dismissed on three counts:

Firstly, on the ground of non-compliance with Section 81(3);

Secondly, that the election petition does not reveal a complete cause of action as it does not contain all the material facts necessary to constitute to be the cause of action; and

Thirdly, that one Vijay Goel who was also a candidate in the said election is also a necessary party as per the provisions of section 82 of the Act but not impleaded as the respondent.

6. At the outset I must mention that though the 2nd of the abovementioned objections was pleaded vaguely in the abovementioned interlocutory application, it does not appear to have been pressed before the High Court and certainly not argued before us. So I shall confine our scrutiny to the correctness of the judgment in appeal so far as the objections Nos.1 and 3 of the appellant are concerned.

7. The High Court summarised the contours of the 1st objection at para 3 of the Judgment as follows:

(i) “Not all pages and documents furnished to the second respondent, along with copies of the petition, contained signatures of the petitioner;

(ii) Many portions of the documents filed with the petition were missing;

(iii) Copies of several pages of annexures (to the petition) furnished to the second respondent were dim or illegible;

(iv) The election petition was not properly verified;

(v) The verification clause in the copy furnished to the second respondent did not contain signatures of the petitioner.”

8. The relevant portion of the pleadings in this regard are to be found at paras 4 & 5 of the Interlocutory Application as follows:

“4. That the petitioner has filed the election petition in contravention of various provisions of law and the main petition placed before this Hon'ble Court for trial is not completely signed and verified on each and every page of the petition and attested by the petitioner as required by law.

5. That there are number of pages of the petition and documents annexed with the petition which are either not at all signed by the petitioner and even none of the document/annexure has been verified under the signature of the petitioner as required by law.

The copy of the petition as supplied to the respondent No.2 along with Annexures is annexed herewith as Annexure-‘A’.

On scrutiny of the above referred copy of the petition and inspection of the court record, the applicant/Respondent No.2 has found the following deficiencies which are fatal to the petition.

(i) None of the pages except the last two pages of the petition i.e. P