By the Court.—This writ petition involves the game of power played by stakeholders, and its acquisition by methods that are not unknown to politics in a democracy. When Winston Churchill said that “democracy is the worst system devised by the wit of man, except for all the others” then our late Prime Minister Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru replied by saying that “Democracy is good. I say this, because other systems are worse”. The path to power in a democracy by playing the game of numbers, even though it may virtually end in the digit ‘0’, is played with deftness and it is because of this that Jon Winne-Tyson said “that the wrong sort of people are always in power because they would not be in power if they are not wrong sort of people. “Still the ideal preserved is what was said by Pittacus (650-569 B.C.) that “the measure of the man is what he does with power”.

2. The instant case is a living example of what is happening in our society, and when those who are called upon to deal with situations where the lust of power is pretended to be saved in the name of democracy, also get swayed away to do something which ultimately results in a legal tangle that the judiciary is called upon to resolve.

3. It is the misfortune of this system, that we have inherited which is full of infinite errors, most of which are created and motivated. This case indicates how a merited statutory procedure can be polluted to defeat the pure intentions of the legislature. It also unfolds as to how men of no principles but of great talent and conversely men of no talent but of one principle, that is how to achieve power, have placed their pawns in this indecent game of political chess.

4. This is a dispute relating to the no confidence motion tabled and passed against the petitioner, the elected Adhyaksha/Chairman of the District Panchayat of Varanasi.

5. A notice under Section 28 of the Uttar Pradesh, Zila Panchayat and Kshettra Panchayat Adhiniyam, 1961 was moved on 6th June, 2012, which written notice was processed by the District Magistrate and in turn he issued notices to all the members on 7th June, 2012 fixing 28th June, 2012 as the date for consideration of the no confidence motion. The said move was challenged by the petitioner by filing writ petition No. 30614 of 2012 in which no orders were passed, and it ultimately appears to have become infructuous as the no confidence motion was tabled on the date fixed. There are 39 members in all, and according to the provisions referred to hereinabove the motion has to be carried with the support of more than half of the total number of elected members. The case set up in the writ petition is that 20 members are stated to have participated, but according to the petitioner only 19 valid votes were cast as such the motion ought to have failed.

6. The dispute in the present matter centres around the 20th votes which would turn the fate of the no confidence motion keeping in view the numbers aforesaid. If all the 20 votes are valid then the motion has to be upheld, but if one of the votes turns out to be invalid for whatever reason, then the motion fails.

7. The petitioner came out with a case in the writ petition that one of the members, Uday Bhan Singh who is respondent No. 7 had not cast his vote, and some impostor had utilized a ballot paper which has been suspiciously cast so as to increase the number of valid votes from 19 to 20 for the purpose of carrying out the motion. It is thus a margin of one solitary valid vote which is the centre of controversy in the present case.

8. After the writ petition was filed three supplementary-affidavits have been filed by the petitioner, and with the filing of the second supplementary-affidavit, the case took a turn when certain glaring facts were disclosed with regard to the status of that solitary ballot paper about which the petitioner had already expressed his doubts in the writ petition. This was done with the help of the information received under the Right to