1. The petitioner has filed this petition being aggrieved by order dated 28.6.2010 passed by the Commissioner, Revenue Division, Shahdol and Election Tribunal in Election Petition Case No.36/Election Petition/2009-10.

2. The brief facts, leading to the filing of the present petition, are that the petitioner is the elected President of the Zila Panchayat, Shahdol. The respondent No.3, being aggrieved by the election of the petitioner, filed a election petition under the provisions of section 122 of the M.P. Panchayat Raj Evam Gram Swaraj Adhiniyam, 1993 (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Adhiniyam’) and rule 8 of M.P. Panchayats (Election Petitions, Corrupt Practices and Disqualification for Membership) Rules, 1995 (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Rules’) before the Election Tribunal/Commissioner, Revenue Division, Shahdol.

3. The petitioner filed a preliminary objections as to the maintainability of the election petition on the ground that the election petition had not been filed by the respondent No.3 herself but had been filed by her advocate who was not specifically authorized to do so and that the copies of the election petition filed by the respondent No.3 did not contain a specific attestation to the effect that they were true copies of the election petition. It was urged that in view of the aforesaid, the election petition, filed by respondent No.3, did not comply with the mandatory requirement of rule 3 of the Rules and was, therefore, required to be dismissed under rules 8 and 21 of the Rules. The aforesaid objections of the petitioner has been rejected by the Election Tribunal by the impugned order dated 28.6.2010 being aggrieved by which the petitioner has filed the present petition.

4. It is submitted by the learned counsel for the petitioner that rule 3 of the Rules provides that the election petition has to be filed and presented by the election petitioner herself or through a person specially authorized by her to do so but in the instant case the election petition was filed by the respondent No.3 through her advocate without any specific or special authorization as required by the Rules but was filed along with a general and usual Vakalatnama which did not authorize him to file the election petition and, therefore, there is no compliance of the mandatory provisions of rule 3 of the Rules, as has been held by this Court in the case of Suman Santosh Kumar Patel v. Bhanwati Mahesh Pratap Patel and another [1999(1) MPLJ 88], Tara v. Dabla alias Lalita and others [2002(2) Vidhi Bhasvar 157=2002(2) MPHT 554], and Kana Mandal (Smt.) v. State of M.P. and others [2010(III) MPWN 47=2010(3) MPHT 278].

5. It is further submitted that in view of the decision of this Court rendered in the case of Baijulal Verma v. Additional Collector, Chhindwara and others [2010(1) MPHT 477], in the absence of the requisite attestation, the petition filed by the respondent No.3 deserves to be dismissed. It is urged that the aforesaid aspect has not properly been considered by the Election Tribunal and, therefore, the impugned order deserves to be set aside.

6. The petitioner has also brought on record the fact that the respondent No.3 had previously filed another election petition under the same Rules, however, section 36 of the Adhiniyam was also mentioned in the said election petition which was dismissed by the same Election Tribunal by order dated 19.2.2010 by clearly holding that the election petition under section 36 of the Adhiniyam was not maintainable and also in view of non-compliance of the mandatory provisions of rules 3, 4 and 7 of the Rules, but the Tribunal totally ignoring the aforesaid has entertained the second petition filed by respondent No.3 which is contrary to law.

7. The learned counsel for the respondent No.3, per contra, submits that the election petitioner respondent No.3 was herself present along with her counsel on 24.2.2010 for presenting the petition before the prescribed authority and, therefore, in view o