TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1959 (9) TMI 71
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....espondent and his election agent had appointed a number of persons as the respondent's counting and polling agents at different centres and that the said persons were, at the material time, working as lambardars, and, therefore, the respondent was guilty of corrupt practice within the meaning of s. 123 of the Act. The respondent denied the material allegations made in the petition. On the pleadings as many as 12 issues were framed, and issues 3 and 8 were taken up for trial as preliminary issues. Issue 8, which is the only relevant issue for the present enquiry, reads; "Is Lambardar a person in the service of Government or is it covered by any of the clauses of section 123(7) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 ?" The Election Tribunal held against the respondent on both the preliminary issues. On issue 8 it held that a lambardar was a revenue officer and village accountant in the service of Government within the meaning of cl. (f) of sub-s. (7) of s. 123 of the Act. On the basis of the findings on the preliminary issues, the Tribunal directed that the remaining issues be set down for hearing. The respondent canvassed the correctness of that order by filing a petit....
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....ate's election, from any person in the service of the Government and belonging to any of the following classes, namely : (f) revenue officers including village accountants, such as, patwaris, lekhpals, talatis, karnams and the like but excluding other village officers. Explanation - (1) In this section the expression "agent" includes an election agent, a polling agent and any person who is held to have acted as an agent in connection with the election with the consent of the candidate. (2) For the purposes of clause (7), a person shall be deemed to assist in the furtherance of the prospects of candidate's election if he acts as an election agent, or a polling agent, or a counting agent of that candidate. Under this section, so far as it is material to the present enquiry, a candidate cannot appoint a person as his election agent if such person is in the service of Government and is one of the officers governed by cl. (f) of sub-s. (7). A lambardar to be a disqualified officer should not only be in the service of Government but should be revenue officer within the meaning of cl. (f) of sub-s. (7) of s. 123 of the Act. If he was not one of the revenue officers within ....
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....ccountants, such as, patwaris, lekhpals, talatis karnams and the like. A careful study of the functions of the enumerated officers discloses that they are only local equivalents of a patwari. Clause (f) itself supplies the dictionary to ascertain the meaning of the words "village accountants." The phrase "such as" immediately following the words "village accountants," and the phrase "the like" following the enumerated officers indicate that the examples are intended to provide a definition by illustration. To put it differently, the enumerated categories of officers and the like indicate precisely the content and connotation of the words "village accounts." (iii) Other Village Officers : Other village officers are obviously village officers other than the village accountants. The point to be emphasized is that unlike in the case of revenue officers, who include officers whose jurisdiction is not confined to the respective villages alone, this category of officers are confined to those exercising jurisdiction within a village. It is an elementary rule that construction of a section is to be made of all the parts together and not of one part only by itself, and that phrases are t....
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....r Act, lest the public might interpret the word "like" in such a way as to take in all the village officers who are not revenue officers. To accept this argument is to impute to the Legislature want of precision. The words "revenue officers", in whatever sense they are used, cannot obviously comprehend officers who are not revenue officers, and in that situation there is no necessity to exclude such officers from the group of revenue officers. The Legislative device of exclusion is adopted only to exclude a part from the whole, which, but for the exclusion, continues to be part of it. This interpretation must be rejected as it involves the recognition of words which are surplusage.Nor has the alternative construction any higher merits. The genus, the argument proceeds, is the village accountants, and the exclusion is from the category of village accountants only. This construction suffers from two defects. Firstly, the village officers cannot be the species carved out of the genus "village accountants", for the words "village officers" have a wider connotation than the words "village accountants". To accept this interpretation is to read "village accountants" as "village officers".....
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....The exclusion of every other village officer from the provisions of cl. (f) compels the conclusion that before this clause can apply to a Sarpanch of the Grama Panchayat under the Orissa Act it must be proved that he is either a revenue officer or a village accountant. "It is contended that the said observations show that this Court interpreted the terms of cl. (f) in a manner different from that we have indicated. While we have held that the words "such as etc. . ." and "the like" are only descriptive of village accountants, the observations extracted above seems to suggest that the said words are descriptive of the composite expression "revenue officers including village accountants". Even in that view, we do not think that that excluding clause refers to village accountants only and not to revenue officers. The learned Judges were concerned with a sarpanch, and they held that he was not a village officer. If he was not a village officer, he was not excluded from the category of revenue officers in the clause, and, therefore, the said clause would apply to him if he was a revenue officer or a village accountant. Therefore, when the learned Judges said that it must be proved tha....
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....name 'Karnam' in the South, and 'Kulkarni' in the West. "In Vol. II of the said book, the learned author again describes a lambardar and a patwari in Punjab in the following terms, at p. 740 :" In the Punjab, the headman is styled 'lambardar'. As many, if not most, villages have several sections, there are usually several 'lambardars', and thus the advantage of representation of many co-sharers by one man is to some extent lost. It is thought necessary, therefore, to have as agent for a number of representatives, a single chief headman, with whom it is easier to communicate, and who can be held responsible." Dealing with patwaris, the learned author says at p. 733 : " This official is of the utmost importance to the system. On his being duly trained and being competent carefully to prepare the village records and statistics, really depends (in the last resort) the hope of diminishing the labour and trouble to the people which the recurrence of Settlement proceedings occasions. "The learned author mentions the other duties of the patwaris at p. 735. The most important of the duties of a patwari is the preparing and keeping up of the Annual Land-....
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....(6) Statements of ownership, mortgages and revenue assignments. (7) Statements of cultivating occupancy. (8) Statement of rent paid by tenants-at-will. (9) Statement of agricultural stock. For better particulars of the respective duties of a village headman and a patwari, the provisions of the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887 (Act XVII of 1887), and the Rules made thereunder, particularly r. 20 thereof, and Chapter III of the Punjab Land Records Manual may conveniently be referred to. A comparative study of the respective duties of a village headman and a patwari brings out the distinction between the two, namely, that the former is not only an agent of the State in the village but also the recognized representative of the village, and the latter is a comparatively minor officer entrusted with the duty of maintaining the accounts and other relevant records pertaining to the revenue business. With this background the Parliament passed s. 123 of the Act. Originally s. 123(8), which corresponded to s. 123(7) of the Act, read as follows; "123. Major corrupt practices. The following shall be deemed to be corrupt practices for the purposes of this Act, - (8) The obtaining or pr....