These applications, preferred under Article 226 of the Constitution for the issue of writs of certiorari and prohibition, arose out of proceedings in Election Petition No. 86 of 1957, which had been filed by Sa Ganesan to avoid the election of the returned candidate, Muthiah Chettiar, from the Karaikudi Constituency of the Madras Legislative Assembly. It should be convenient to refer to Muthiah Chettiar and Sa Ganesan respectively as the returned candidate and election petitioner in the rest of this judgment.

When the returned candidate had occasion at an earlier stage of the proceedings before the Election Tribunal to challenge the validity of another of the interlocutory orders of the Tribunal by applications preferred under Article 226 of the Constitution — the judgment of this Court has been reported in M. A. Muthiah Chettiar v. Sa Ganesan1, — this Court observed at page 123:

“........issue 1........raised the question of the jurisdiction of the Tribunal to continue the enquiry. Issues 2 to 7 were in a way linked up with issue 1 though, even if issue 1 were decided in favour of the respondent, the others had to be considered. These issues involved the consideration of no evidence, oral or documentary, and had to be determined on a construction of the petition read in the light of the provisions of the Act,” and ordered:

"We therefore consider it proper that we should issue a direction to the Tribunal to decide issues 1 to 7 in the first instance before proceeding further with the trial in the sense of receiving oral or documentary evidence on the several issues framed."

It should be unnecessary to set out over again what preceded that order. The Election Tribunal recorded its findings on issues 1 to 7 in its order, dated 26th December, 1957. It was the validity of those findings that the returned candidate challenged in the two applications he preferred one for the issue of a writ of certiorari to set aside the order of the Election Tribunal and the other for the issue of a writ of prohibition.

Mr. Kumaramangalam, learned counsel for the election petitioner, pointed out that the returned candidate had invoked again the jurisdiction of this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution to challenge the correctness of an interlocutory order of the Tribunal, and the learned counsel urged that the Court should exercise its discretion and discharge the rule nisi as the errors, if any, committed by the Tribunal could be corrected in appeal, should one be necessary, under section 116-A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, as amended by Act XXVII of 1956. In dealing with a similar contention, this Court observed in M. A. Muthiah Chettiar v. Sa Ganesan1 at page 124:

"......the power and jurisdiction of the Tribunal which is a creation of the Act are not plenary but limited and it has to function within the limits set to it......We are satisfied that this order for amendment passed by the Tribunal was beyond its jurisdiction and was vitiated by apparent error in misunderstanding the decision of the Supreme Court in Bajpai’s case2. Turning to the order impugned in W.P. No. 668 of 1957, it was no doubt an interlocutory one, but Article 226 is couched in the widest terms and is not confined to final orders. There being no statutory or constitutional bar to the exercise of our powers, the question that we had to consider was whether in the exercise of our discretion we should interfere at this stage. The existence of a provision for an appeal was certainly a material fact to be taken note of but that is not determinative. We took into account the fact that the policy of the Act was to have an expeditious disposal of election petitions, and we considered that this would be frustrated if we did not set aside, what we were convinced was an erroneous order which, if it had continued to be in force, would have enlarged the enquiry by evidence which at a later stage would have to be discarded. It is the same process of reasoning that h