election is made immune and granted exemption from the operation of such a provision. 201. The vice of clause (4) of Article 329A is not merely that it makes the previous law contained in the RP Act as amended by Acts 58 of 1974 and 40 of 1975 inapplicable to the challenge to the election of the appellant, it also makes no other election law applicable for resolving that dispute. The further vice from which the said clause suffers is that it not merely divests the previous authority, namely, the High Court of its jurisdiction to decide the dispute relating to the election of the appellant, it confers no jurisdiction on some other authority to decide that dispute. Without even prescribing a law and providing a forum for adjudicating upon the grounds advanced by the respondent to challenge the election of the appellant, the constituent authority has declared the election of the appellant to be valid. 202. To confer an absolute validity upon the election of one particular candidate and to prescribe that the validity of that election shall not be questioned before any forum or under any law would necessarily have the effect of saying that howsoever gross may be the improprieties which might have vitiated that election, howsoever flagrant may be the malpractices which might have been committed on behalf of the returned candidate during the course of the election and howsoever foul and violative of the principles of free and fair elections may be the means which might have been employed for securing success in that election, the said election would be none-the-less valid and it would not be permissible to complain of those improprieties malpractices and unfair means before any forum or under any law with a view to assail the validity of that election. Not much argument is needed to show that any provision which brings about that result is subversive of the principle of free and fair election in a democracy. The fact that the candidate concerned is the Prime Minister of the country or the Speaker of the lower House of Parliament would, if anything, add force to the above conclusion because both these offices represent the acme of the democratic process in a country. That in fact the elections of the incumbents of the two offices were not vitiated by any impropriety, malpractice or unfair means is not relevant or germane to the question with which we are concerned, namely, as to what is the effect of clause (4) of Article 329A. 203. The vice of declaration contained in part (iii) of clause (4) regarding the validity of the election of the appellant is aggravated by the fact that such a declaration is made after the High Court which was then seized of jurisdiction had found substance in some of the grounds advanced by the respondent and had consequently declared the election of the appellant to be void. To put a stamp of validity on the election of a candidate by saying that the challenge to such an election would not be governed by any election law and that the said election in any case would be valid and immune from any challenge runs counter to accepted norms of free and fair elections in all democratic countries. In the case of Marbury v. Madison, (1803) 1 Cranch 137 at p. 163 marshall C.J. said that “the government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws and not of men.” In United