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Machine Translated by Google Judgment date: 2071/05/05 Case No: 068CI-0216 ÿ Decision No: # 9319 - Dispatch (https://nkp.gov.np/full_detail/ 8363) Judgment Date : 2070/10/20 | Case No: 069-WS-0035

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Chaturman Beda vs Election Special Court and others

Judgment

Question Presented: Whether the ineligibility of a winning candidate due to his age should result in declaring the runner-up candidate as the winner of the election or invalidating the entire election result.

Alleged Acts: Following a results petition against the winning candidate by an opponent candidate, a Special Election Court found that the respondent was ineligible to run in the election due to his age. The Special Election Court declared the runner-up candidate as the winner of the election. The respondent (winning candidate) claimed that the Court did not impose the proper remedy and should have instead invalidated the election results and ordered a rerun.

Procedural history: Following the election results petition by the Special Election Court, the respondent filed a writ petition before the Supreme Court to declare the decision of Special Election Court null and void. When filing his candidacy, the winning candidate lied about his age, claiming to be 21 years old when he was only 19. He won the election and became Deputy Pradhan Pancha (Deputy Head of the Panchayat, or the village council). His opponent filed a result petition with the Special Election Court to invalidate the election under Section 14(1)(6)(g) of the Election Offence and Punishment Act (1967). The Special Election Court did not invalidate the entire election but cancelled the candidacy of the winning candidate and declared the opposition candidate as the winner of the election because he received the second highest number of votes. The winning candidate alleged that the Special Election Court’s decision to declare his opponent the winner of the election as improper under Sections 14(1)(a)(b) and 14(2)(a) of the Election Offence and Punishment Act (1967) and petitioned for issuance of writ of certiorari and other necessary orders.

Summary: The Court determined that the main issue in this case is not the validity of the entire election results, but merely the invalidation of the results in the Deputy Pradhan Pancha election, since the petitioner had lied about his age while filing for candidacy in violation of Section 14(1) of the Election Offence and Punishment Act (1967). If an offence under Section 14(2)(a)(b) of the Act is proven, a hearing officer may annul the election of the candidate who committed the offence and decide that the other person has been duly elected to the position. The Court held that the Special Election Court properly annulled the election of the fraudulent candidate and declared the winner as the candidate who got the second highest number of votes.

Conclusion: The Court dismissed the writ petition and upheld the decision of the Special Election Court, on the grounds that the main legal issue concerns the candidate’s ineligibility due to age rather than the invalidation of the entire election and declared the candidate who acquired the second highest number of votes the winner.

Legal Issue(s)

Candidate Registration
Disputing Results
Electoral Integrity

Applicable Law(s): Election Offence and Punishment Act, 1967; Local Level Panchayat Directive, 1986

Region: Asia-Pacific

Country: Nepal

Language of Decision

Nepali

Court: Supreme Court

Election Type: Local

Date of decision: Feb 14, 1990

Geolocation

Latitude: 28.289870471423562

Longitude: 83.99138314546404

: Geolocation

Primary Documents

Chaturman Beda vs Election Special Court and others (English).pdf
English
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Chaturman Beda vs Election Special Court and others (Nepali).pdf
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Election Judgments - IFES

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Chaturman Beda vs Election Special Court and others

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