opposition parties in choosing such a candidate from a constituency from which they thought the Prime Minister must be standing. It was obviously meant to disparage such tactics and not to disclose her own intentions or future course of action. A healthy democratic practice or convention certainly is that the election of some candidates, of certain stature and standing or position in public life is not contested. To point out that the opposition parties far from intending to adopt such an attitude towards her, were busy devising methods of maligning her, could not reasonably be construed as a holding out of herself as a candidate from a particular constituency unless one was predisposed to put such a construction on every ambiguous statement of the Prime Minister, made anywhere after the dissolution of Parliament in December, 1970 until the election in the first week of March, 1971. Simlarly, the context of the question of 29-12-1970, put to the Prime Minister at a conference at New Delhi, was that members of the opposition parties thought that she may be contesting from Gurgaon. In the light of the opposition tactics, which the Prime Minister herself had referred to in her speech at Coimbatore, it was not unlikely that the Prime Minister would have preferred to keep her own intentions about the constituency, from which she would ultimately stand either a closely guarded secret, or, at least, in a fluid State. In any case, it was not likely that she would announce her own intention very clearly to stand from any particular constituency until it was considered by her or by her polticial advisers to be politically expedient to do so. Again, it may be that the prospect of such a leader standing from a particular constituency was likely to have a politically exhilarating effect upon the workers or on party activities in that constituency. From such a point of view also, the Congress Party (R) of the Prime Minister may also have preferred that the Prime Minister should not announce her decision until the last moment. A disputed question of fact on such a matter could not possibly be determined by a Court on evidence of guess-work or speculations of others which are strictly speaking, not relevant. I have indicated here that if some guess-work were permissible, as it is to give its benefit to the person against whom circumstantial evidence is to be used, other possible explanations and interpretations were not excluded. The question had to be decided on proof of the actual statements and actions of the candidate herself which should amount to clear and unequivocal expressions of intention, showing a decision to stand from a particular constituency, meant primarily for the benefit of the voters of the particular constituency so chosen by a candidate. Where was that evidence here? 451. It seems to me that the learned Judge had given an exaggerated importance to what were either not strictly relevant or insignificant matters in preference to what could be and was decisive and unequivocal. I do not think that the answer of the Prime Minister at the Press Conference on 2912-1970 or the contents of her speech in Coimbatore, in early January, 1971, or even a declaration or announcement of the All India Congress Committee on 29-1-1971, assuming that there was such an announcement, could mean that the Prime Minister had herself finally decided to contest from the Rae