Election Law Notes- Introduction

Election is a method for drawing public opinion. Since it is a democracy, the candidate must know what the public wants. There is no single definition.

Election means an act or process of choosing a person for an office position or membership by voting.

Section 2(d) of Representation of People Act, 1951 talks about the definition of election. Election means an election to fill a seat or seats in either house of parliament or in the house or either house of the legislature of a state.

The word election implies persons who are to elect (Called to be electors), the office to which election is to be made and the person who is to be elected is called the candidate.

Punnooswamy v. Returning Officer, AIR 1952 SC 64- Defined what election is. The word election has by long usage in connection with the process of selection of proper representation in democratic institutions, acquired both the wide and narrow meaning. In the narrow sense, it means that the final selection which may impress the result of the poll when there is polling or a particular candidate being returned unopposed when there is no poll. In the wide sense, the word is used to connote the entire process culminating in a candidate being declared elected.

Mohinder Singh Gill v. CEC, AIR 1978 SC 851- “Election covers the entire process from the issuance of the notification under Section 14 of the Representation of People Act, 1951 to the declaration of result under Section 66 of the act. Even when a poll that has already been taken place, has been cancelled and a fresh poll has been ordered or election commission amends its notification and extend time for completion of election, it is an order during the course of election even if it is a wrong order, it cannot be questioned during the process. If during the process of election at an intermediate or final stage, the entire poll has wrongly cancelled and a fresh poll has been wrongly ordered, that is a matter which may be agitated after declaration of the result on the basis of the fresh poll, by questioning the election in an appropriate form by means of an election petition.”- Justice Krishna Iyer

Electoral Right to Vote and Contest

Article 326- Adult Suffrage

Election contest is not an action in law but is purely a statutory proceeding unknown to common law.

M. Karunanidhi v. H.V. Hande- AIR 1983 SC 558- Right to Vote or Right to stand as a Candidate is a creature of the statute or a special law and is therefore subject to the limitations imposed by that statute or special law.

Jyoti Basu v. Devi Ghosal- AIR 1982 SC 983- A Right to Elect, fundamental though it is to democracy, is neither a fundamental nor a common law right, it is pure and simple statutory right so is the right to be elected.