A breach of election rules does not automatically invalidate an election; it must be shown to have materially affected the result, as per Rule 11.

1. The petitioner asks this Court to set aside the order of the Lower Court in O. P. No. 7 of 1924 on its file. That was a petition under the Election Rules framed under the Madras District Municipalities Act V of 1920 to set aside the election of the present petitioner held on nth February, 1924 for a ward in the Erode Municipality, and for other incidental reliefs.

2. The Lower Court found that the petitioner, who was the Vice-Chairman of the Municipality and was acting as Chairman during the temporary absence of the Chairman, had broken Rule 32 of the Rules for the conduct of elections of Municipal Councillors in that he, in the matter of the nomination of candidates for the vacancy in this ward, had himself scrutinised and passed his own nomination paper. Whether in thus holding that there was a breach of Rule 32 he did find at all or did properly find that this violation had materially affected the result of the election and therefore he had jurisdiction to set aside the election, is the chief point argued before us.

3. At one stage in its order the Lower Court seems to hold that the mere breach of the rule itself rendered the election void and, therefore, " there is no need to consider whether the result of the election was materially affected". Later on it holds that, as the result of the petitioners breach of the rules was that voters voted for a candidate who was not validly nominated, the result of the election was materially affected. The two findings seem different aspects of the same conclusion rather than two different conclusions.

4. One of us, Wallace, J. has already held in a case reported in Ahmad Thambi Maracayar v. Basava Maracayar (1922) ILR 46 M 123 : 44 MLJ 69 that a breach of the election rules will not in itself justify an Election Court holding that the election is invalid and must be set aside. It has to be further proved that that breach of the rules materially affected the result of the election. That follows from the plain words of Rule 11 of the " rules for decision of disputes as to the validity of an election ". We have heard nothing now in the argument to induce us to modify that opinion. It does not then follow that a breach of the rules regarding this nomination ipso facto renders void or invalid the election, carried through by means of such a breach. There is, no rule which says so and if a breach of any such rule automatically carried with it the invalidity of a nomination or candidature so that the election following thereon would be invalid also, Rule 11 is a superfluous rule. The result of the election, therefore, must be affected in some other way than by the mere breach of the rule, that is, the breach must in itself have resulted in and produced some other result which has in itself the effect of invalidating a candidature or a nomination or an election; as, for example, the breach must have resulted in the candidature of some one incompetent to stand or the nomination of some one who could not be validly nominated. The real question, therefore, which the Lower Court had to put to itself was, supposing that the rule now found to have been broken had not been broken and the nomination proceedings had been conducted by the proper authority properly constituted under R..32, would the result, namely, the petitioners nomination, have been different? Would the petitioners nomination have been invalid either because he was incompetent to stand for election at all or because his nomination paper was in some way defective, or would the result have been just what it was, namely, that the petitioners nomination was invalid and his candidature proper? If the latter, we find it impossible to hold that the result of the election was materially affected by the breach of the rules. We are clear also that the Lower Court has not looked, at the case from this point of view. It has simply held that as there was a breach of the rules, therefore the nomination was invalid and therefore an election