Point of Law : Section 16C of the Karnataka Municipalities Act, 1964 provides for disqualification of elected members on the ground that they have failed to lodge a true and correct account of electoral expenditure with the Returning Officer within 30 days to be reckoned from the date of declaration of the result of victorious candidate.

ORDER :

1. Petitioners having been disqualified from continuing as the elected members of the Municipality are knocking at the doors of the Writ Court for assailing the disqualification order dated 15.11.2021, a copy whereof is at Annexure-H issued by the 1st Respondent- State Election Commission. The operative portion of the said order reads as under:

2. After service of notice, the respondents having entered appearance through their learned advocates oppose the petition, making submission in justification of the impugned order and the reasons on which it has been constructed.

3. Having heard the learned counsel for the parties and having perused the petition papers, this Court declines to grant indulgence in the matter as under and for the following reasons:

(a) Section 16C of the Karnataka Municipalities Act, 1964 provides for disqualification of elected members on the ground that they have failed to lodge a true and correct account of electoral expenditure with the Returning Officer within 30 days to be reckoned from the date of declaration of the result of victorious candidate. This provision enacted w.e.f. 10-11-2003 has the following text:

“16C. Failure to lodge an account of election expenses - If the State Election Commission is satisfied that any person:

(a) has failed to lodge an account of election expenses within the time and in the manner required by or under this Act.

(b) has no good reason or justification for the failure; The State Election Commission shall by order published in the official Gazette declare him to be disqualified and any such person shall be disqualified for a period of three years from the date of the order.”

It is to be noted that Section 16C of the 1964 Act, corresponds to Section 77(1) and 78 of the Representation of Peoples Act, 1951, read with Rule 86 of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961.

(b) A few prefatory observations are necessary before considering the explanation offered by the petitioners for not lodging the account of election expenses. MAX LERNER in his book, NINE SCORPIONS IN A BOTTLE at Page 22 writes:

“Man as a political animal lives in a world riddled with bugbears and taboos. Political thinkers as diverse as the English idealist and the classical Marxist have labored under a common fallacy: they have taken their own sense of the logical relation of things and read into it the way men behave. Actually, men behave in their political lives with disheartening illogicality...”

To the notices dated 27.01.2020 copies whereof avail at Annexure-A, B and C, that are issued by the State Election Commission, petitioners have sent their reply on 17.06.2020. These copies are at Annexure-D, E and F wherein they specifically admitted that they have not filed their accounts of election expenditure with the Returning Officer. The Apex Court in Harcharan Singh vs. Mohinder Singh, 1969 (1) SCR 198 observed as under:

“The primary purpose of the diverse provisions of the election law which may appear to be technical is to safeguard the purity of the election process.....”

It hardly needs to be stated that an election is a politically sacred public act, not of one person or of one official, but of the collective will of the whole constituency. Adjudication of disputes of the kind at the hands of the competent authority is governed by the statutes, common law, equity and the like ordinarily remaining strangers vide Jyoti Basu vs. Debi Ghosal, 1982 (3) SCR 318.

(c) C. RAJAGOPALACHARI (1878-1972), a veteran Freedom Fighter in his prison diary in 1922 had noted:

“......Elections and their corruption, injustice and tyranny of wealth and inefficiency of administration, will make a hell of life as soon as freedom is given to us.....” The rationale of imposing a limit on expenditure incurred or authorized by a candidate in an election is to eliminate, as far as possible, the pernicious influence of ‘big money’ on the election process. The Law Commission of India in its Report No. 255 on Electoral Reforms (March 2015)