JUDGMENT

Walsh and Ryves, JJ. - This is an application in revision under circumstances which we trust are exceptional, and which the order made in the present case by the learned Commissioner will render less frequent in future. In the course of an election petition--there are in fact three cases but it is only necessary to mention one, because the matter has been argued as one, each case being typical of the rest--the Commissioner, in a judgment which is not before us, came to the conclusion that the election was void, and that the candidate had been guilty of such misfeasance that it was necessary to disfranchise him from elections for a period of five years. In addition to that he found that the person who is now the applicant before us had falsely personated a voter on the electoral roll, who may of course have been dead, or ill and unable to vote, or unwilling to take part in the election, and that the candidate had aided and abetted. That in itself, as Dr. Katju has rightly argued, is made an offence by chapter 9A, a new provision in the Penal Code dealing with electoral offences, and, for reasons which were no doubt desirable, the Legislature has required that the sanction of the Local Government should be given to any criminal proceedings for offences under that new chapter. But it so happened, and the sooner it is generally known and appreciated by persons who claim to take part in the Government of the country and to send representatives to the Legislature or Municipal Assembly the better, that a person cannot, in consequence of the machinery which has been provided, successfully personate and obtain the necessary voting paper of another individual without signing, what purports to be his name, or affixing what purports to be his thumb-impression, and prima facie, in accordance with the provisions of Section 463 of the Indian Penal Code, whoever makes a false document with a paper impressed with the pretended thumb-impression of the person who did not put his thumb-impression there, with intention to cause damage to the public, commits forgery. We can imagine nothing more fraudulent in election matters and, therefore, damaging to the public, unless election matters are to be considered so trivial as to be of no moral importance whatever, than deliberately to utilize the machinery intended to provide an honest result for the purpose of deception and of securing a result which is not the true result, and may not represent the wishes of the majority of the constituents. Such conduct is bad enough in the case of an illiterate voter who must know quite well that he is lending himself to fraud, but in the case of a candidate, who is presumed to have some measure of education and poses before the public as a person claiming to represent the view of a particular faction, such conduct is highly criminal and ought to be punished with the utmost severity. Some electoral offences like wearing badges, spending a. little too much money on excitement and tamashas, using undue influence with a voter, or even sometimes exceeding the law in endeavouring to give a correct description of what you believe to be the character of your opponent, and things of that sort, are matters which arise out of heat and party conflict, and may be regarded as things which are ephemeral and do not strike deep into the roots of public policy. These are offences which, as Dr. Kdtju has pointed out, require the sanction of the Local Government. But there is a wide difference between these and offences which are deliberate offences against the general law of the land. We have dwelt upon this aspect of the merits because it has been strongly urged upon us that in any event we ought to stop this prosecution at its birth on the ground, as far as we can follow it, that if a man only commits an electoral offence within chapter 9A of the Indian Penal Code, it does not matter what other crime he commits and that he ought not to be prosecuted for it. We think the so