LAW FOR ALL

JUDICIAL INDISCIPLINE and disregard =The judge clearly ignored that the law declared by this Court is binding on all courts within the territory of India under Article 141 of the Constitution of India, and judicial discipline required him to follow the mandate of the Constitution. He entered into an impermissible exercise, and deleted the votes received by the appellant which he considered to be tainted votes. It is quite shocking to see that the learned judge has proceeded to delete the votes of the appellant from 8 polling stations, although the grievance was only about Ruhi and Roing polling stations. By making these deductions, he came to the conclusion that the respondent No. 1 had received 826 votes more. As can be seen from paragraph 28 of the judgment, rendered in Civil Appeal No. 1539 of 2012, that at best the case of the first respondent was that there were double entries of voters in 1304 names. The allegation was only with respect to two polling stations. In those polling stations, the appellant had received 1873 votes. Even if these 1304 votes were to be deleted, it would not affect the result materially since the appellant had won with a margin of 2713 votes. The learned judge, therefore, ignored that even if the ground of improper reception of votes under section 100(1)(d)(iii) was to be taken, the respondent no.1 had failed to establish that the result of the election of the appellant had been materially affected by such improper reception of votes. The decision of the learned judge was therefore clearly flawed and untenable. - Thus, the learned judge went into the counterfoils of the voters inspite of the fact that this court had already ruled in the judgment in C.A. 1539 of 2010, that in the facts of the present case, no case was made out for calling of the counterfoils. - Thereafter, however he proceeded to act exactly contrary to the direction emanating from the dismissal of M.C. (EP) No. 5 (AP) of 2010, which amounts to nothing but judicial indiscipline and disregard to the mandate of Article 141 of the Constitution of India. This is shocking, to say the least, and most unbecoming of a judge holding a high position such as that of a High Court Judge. We fail to see as to what made the judge act in such a manner, though we refrain from going into that aspect. = it is unfortunate that such acts of judicial impropriety are repeated inspite of clear judgments of this court on the significance of Article 141 of the Constitution. Thus, in a judgment by a bench of three judges in Dwarikesh Sugar Industries Ltd. v. Prem Heavy Engineering Works (P) Ltd. and Anr., reported in (1997) 6 SCC 450, this court observed, “32. When a position, in law, is well settled as a result of judicial pronouncement of this Court, it would amount to judicial impropriety to say the least, for the subordinate courts including the High Courts to ignore the settled decisions and then to pass a judicial order which is clearly contrary to the settled legal position. Such judicial adventurism cannot be permitted and we strongly deprecate the tendency of the subordinate courts in not applying the settled principles and in passing whimsical orders which necessarily has the effect of granting wrongful and unwarranted relief to one of the parties. It is time that this tendency stops.” We may as well refer to Para 28 of the State of West Bengal & Ors. v. Shivanand Pathak and Ors., reported in (1998) 5 SCC 513, wherein this court observed, “If a judgment is overruled by the higher court, the judicial discipline requires that the judge whose judgment is overruled must submit to the judgment. He cannot, in the same proceedings or in collateral proceedings between the same parties, rewrite the overruled judgment…” 28. In the circumstances, we have no option but to allow this appeal and set aside the impugned judgment and order rendered by the learned judge of Gauhati High Court dated 12.11.2012. The Election Petition filed by the respondent no. 1, bearing Election Petition No. 1(AP) of 2009, renumbered as Election Petition No. 1 (AP) of 2012, shall stand dismissed. The parties will bear their own costs.