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1. The petitioners are rate-payers of the Basirhat Municipality. The petitioner No. 2 is a sitting Commissioner and has also stood as a candidate for election as Commissioner of the said municipality at the next general election. The respondent No. 1 are the Commissioners of the Basirhat Municipality. The respondents Nos. 2 to 4 are members of the committee appointed under Section 21, of the Bengal Municipal Act, 1932 called the 'Registering authority.' Section 21 of the said Act lays down that a committee consisting of the chairman and two Commissioners to be appointed by the Commissioners at a meeting for this purpose, shall prepare and publish at the time and in the manner prescribed, an Electoral Roll showing the names of persons qualified to vote. Every person whose name appears in the final Electoral Roll published under this section, so long as such Roll remains in force, is entitled to vote at an election and no person whose name does not appear in such Roll can vote at an election. It is provided that when a Municipality has been divided into wards the Electoral Roll shall be divided into separate lists for each ward. The Electoral Roll as published remains in force till the publication of a fresh Electoral Roll. Finally, it is provided that the preliminary and final Electoral Rolls shall be printed and be made available for purchase by any inhabitant of a Municipality, at a reasonable price to be fixed by the Commissioners at a meeting. The word "prescribed" means as prescribed by rules framed under the Act. Section 44 of the Act gives power to the State Government to make rules for the purpose of election of commissioners, and to regulate and determine the preparation, publication and revision of the Electoral Roll. Rules have been framed by Government in exercise of the powers given by Section 44 of the Act; The election rules provide that the registering authority shall prepare in form A appended to the rules, a preliminary Electoral Roll for the Municipality containing the names of all persons qualified to vote under the said Act and after causing it to be printed shall, not less than 150 days before the day fixed for general election under Section 24 of the said Act, publish it. Under Rule 8 of the election rules, any person who objects to a name entered therein, or who claims that a name has been omitted, can make an application before the registering authority for rectification of the preliminary Electoral Roll. After these objections are dealt with, the final Electoral Roll is published. Under Section 529A of the said Act, any person aggrieved by any entry in or omission from, the final Electoral Roll published under Section 21 may, within 15 days from the date of publication of such roll, appeal to the District Magistrate, and if the District Magistrate on such appeal directs any modification or addition to be made in such Roll, the Roll shall be amended accordingly and the amendment so made shall be published in the same manner as the final Roll. I have already stated above that under Section 21 of the Act, the Electoral Roll shall be prepared and published "in the manner prescribed". I have also mentioned above that by the election rules the manner has been prescribed namely, that it must be in form A appended to the rules. A copy of form A is annexed to the petition and marked with letter "A". In the said form there are 9 columns, and the registering authority has to prepare the preliminary and final Electoral Roll by filling or causing to be filled, the said 9 columns. These columns are headed as Follows :

3. Before I proceed to consider the next objection, namely as to whether these provisions are mandatory or directory, I will have to deal with the nature of the defects that are patent in the Electoral Rolls that have been prepared. Before me, certified copies of the final Electoral Rolls have been produced. It is not disputed that the preliminary Electoral Roll had also been prepared in the same manner. I direct that the copies produced should be marked as Exhibit 1 in this case and placed in the record. Coming to the Final Electoral Rolls, it is found that with regard to column 1, the serial numbers have been correctly set out. There is no complaint about this. The second column is also correctly entered, because against each name, the number in the assessment list has been mentioned. The third column, namely the name of the voters has been correctly filled up. When I say this, it must be remembered that in this application we are not concerned with the correctness of any particular name being entered or excluded from the list. Such a complaint would be within the scope of Rule 8 of the election rules or Section 529A of the Act. Coming now to the 4th column, we find that in some cases the father's name and in the case of females, the husband's name has been given. In numerous cases however, the word "not known" is entered, and in number of other cases, for example, in serial Nos. 15, 41, 245, 485, 495, 513, 514 530,531, 578, 579 of Ward No. 8, this column is left absolutely blank. Coming to the 5th column, it is found that the correct age of no person in the list is mentioned. Instead, all of them have been declared to be "more than 21 years of age". Coming to the 6th column, which requires the period of residence to be mentioned, no particular period is mentioned with regard to any entry, but there is a general entry against all the names to the effect that the persons whose names have been entered have been residing within the jurisdiction of the Municipality for a period of more than 1 year. Against the 7th column there is no particular address given excepting a general entry in respect of each ward. For example, in ward No. 4 the address of all the persons has been declared to be "Basirhat". Similarly in ward No. 5 all the residents have the same address namely "Basirhat" So far as column 8 is concerned, it is stated that the voter pays rates or has an educational qualification, Column 9 has been left entirely blank.

5. Section 23 (2) (iii) (a) speaks about payment of municipal rates under Clauses (a), (b), (c) or (d) of Sub-section (1) of Section 123. Without knowing the kind of rate that the voter actually paid it would be impossible to check up the correctness of the entry.

6. There can be no doubt that the Electoral Roll must furnish necessary particulars to show what qualifications a voter has, so as to entitle him to be in the voter's list. But is it the only reason for furnishing such particulars? If this was the only object of making the entries in the Roll, then there was no necessity of mentioning the father's name of the voter or in the case of female voters the name of the husband. Nor was it necessary to give the addresses of the voters. The obvious object of giving these particulars is to ensure the identification of the voter. This identification is required for various purposes, An intending candidate who is going to stand in an election, for being elected as a Commissioner, must have a list of voters from which he can identify each voter so as to be able to approach him for the purpose of procuring his vote. Then again, identification of the voter is necessary, if at the time of polling, any objection is to be made. There may be impersonation or false voting. Unless a voter can be identified from the Electoral Roll, no challenge can be made. Then again, I have already stated that the Act and the Rules contemplate objections to be made with regard to the entry of a name in the Electoral Roll or in respect of an omission therefrom. If the requisite particulars are not there to identify an entry beyond doubt, no objection can be made, because it cannot be clearly established as to whether a name entered has been properly entered or not or whether a name has been really omitted or not I have mentioned above that with regard to the 4th column, in numerous cases it is stated that the voter's father's name is "not known". It is certainly possible to argue that in spite of all possible diligence it might not be possible to ascertain the name of the father or the husband in the ease of each voter on the list; There is however, nothing to show that any such thing has happened in this case. In such a case, there would have been an entry in the remark column to the effect that the names could not be ascertained in spite of enquiry. But even assuming that this land of entry is permitted, there can be no excuse for totally omitting to make any entry in column 4 in the case of numerous persons in the list. The very fact that in some cases the entry "not known" is made and in other cases the entries are blank, shows that there is a difference between the two. Assuming that in the case of entries where, "not known" is entered, due enquiries were made and the particulars could not be discovered, it must equally be assumed that such is not the case where the column is left blank. In a case where the column is left blank, it is evident that no attempt whatsoever has been made to obtain the particulars necessary to be entered in this column. Coming to column 5, I do not think that the object was merely to discover whether the age qualification as contained in Section 23 (2) (i), has been satisfied The age of a person is extremely necessary for the purpose of identification. There may be more than one person of the same name in a ward, one of whom may be young and the other old. If the age is given, it would be easy to identify the person. But other wise identification would be difficult. I do not suggest that it is necessary to make searching enquiries about the correct age of each and every voter. But if it is necessary in law to give the particular, it is necessary to make some enquiry and at least to give an approximate figure, or such information as can reasonably be gathered. When we come to the 7th column, we find that there has really been no attempt to give the address of the voter. To say that in the Basirhat Municipality one lives in Basirhat, is to give no information at all. Of course it is not to be expected that in a mofussil town the same kind of particulars can be given as in a presidency town like Calcutta. There may or may not be street addresses or numbers of municipal premises. But surely some kind of address cap be given which would enable one to identify the residence of the voter. There must be either a holding number or premises number or mahalla or some such identifying description which would fix the particular place where the voter re sides. If there are more than one Voter of the same name, and if in both cases the father's name is blank, and no particulars of age is given, and in both cases the address is "Basirhat", then identification is impossible.

9. There is no corresponding section to Section 68, in the Bengal Municipal Act or the rules, but I think that Section 68 of the English Regulations supports the view that the prime object or an electoral roll is to ensure the identification of the voter, and an electoral roll which does not fulfil that purpose is not an Electoral Roll at all.

10. In my opinion, for the reasons aforesaid the electoral roll as published by the Basirhat Municipality has not been prepared in accordance, with law and is not an electoral roll as contemplated by the Act and the rules. Consequently, an election cannot take place on the strength of this electoral roll.