Statutory election petition remedy bars writ review of factual election disputes, and necessary office-bearers must be joined.

A statutory election-dispute mechanism will generally exclude writ jurisdiction under Article 226 where the challenge to an election turns on disputed facts and the statute provides a complete election-petition remedy. The text also states that relief setting aside the election could not be granted without impleading the newly elected office-bearers, because they were directly affected and had already taken charge. In such matters, necessary parties must be joined or properly represented, failing which the writ petition is defective for non-joinder.

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Issues: (i) Whether a writ petition under Article 226 was maintainable to challenge the election to the Executive Board when the statute provided a specific election-petition remedy; (ii) whether the writ petition was incompetent for non-joinder of the newly elected office-bearers who would be directly affected by the relief sought.

Issue (i): Whether a writ petition under Article 226 was maintainable to challenge the election to the Executive Board when the statute provided a specific election-petition remedy.

Analysis: The statutory scheme governing disputes concerning election to the Committee incorporated, through Section 31 of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwaras Act, the election-dispute machinery of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act. That scheme provided a complete remedy by way of election petition for questioning an election. The dispute raised was essentially factual, turning on whether confusion had been created regarding the date of the meeting and whether some members were thereby prevented from participating. Such a controversy required evidence and was suitable for determination in the statutory forum rather than in writ jurisdiction. No exceptional or extraordinary circumstance was shown to justify bypassing the statutory remedy.

Conclusion: The writ petition was not maintainable on this ground, and the challenge to the election ought to have been pursued by election petition.

Issue (ii): Whether the writ petition was incompetent for non-joinder of the newly elected office-bearers who would be directly affected by the relief sought.

Analysis: The newly elected office-bearers had already taken charge and were functioning, yet they were not impleaded as parties. The relief sought would have directly divested them of office. A writ petition that affects persons vitally and directly must implead such persons, or at least represent them appropriately if joinder individually is impracticable. Since the petitioners did not join the newly elected office-bearers, the petition suffered from a fatal defect of non-joinder of necessary parties.

Conclusion: The writ petition was incompetent on account of non-joinder of necessary parties.

Final Conclusion: The election challenge could not be entertained in writ jurisdiction and also failed for want of necessary parties, so the relief granted by the High Court could not stand.

Ratio Decidendi: Where a statute provides a specific election-petition remedy for election disputes, writ jurisdiction should not be invoked for resolving a factual election controversy, and relief affecting elected office-bearers cannot be granted unless they are impleaded as necessary parties.

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