Misinterpretation of electoral rules

IN a leaderette in our last issue, we drew attention to the flagrant misinterpretation of the spirit of the electoral rules in the case of Dr Gopi Chand, the Lahore Swarajist candidate. We have since seen the order passed by the returning officer on the nomination application of Dr Chand; and from a study of it and other connected facts, we are confirmed in our opinion that Dr Chand had made out a clear case for the admission of his nomination papers and not even the strictest interpretation of the letter of the electoral rules should have succeeded in keeping him back from the election contest. The decision of the returning officer not to admit the nomination papers of Dr Chand is evidently almost entirely based on the wrong notion that the sentence passed on the doctor was still intact, even after the remission of it under the orders of the Punjab Government. The returning officer appears to have defined the term ‘sentence’ as ‘an order of punishment’ and therefore, taking it with the admission of Dr Chand’s counsel that the conviction stood, he is said to have argued somewhat like this: The conviction stands and since the remission is only of the actual punishment, the sentence, i.e, according to him, ‘the order of punishment’ also stands and since this ‘order of punishment’ was for an imprisonment of more than six months, Dr Chand is ineligible for election. What the officer forgot, however, was that whatever interpretation might be given to the term ‘sentence’, that same interpretation would follow this same term when used by the Punjab Government, for the latter distinctly remitted the ‘sentence’.

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