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Nomination paper of the petitioner was rejected on the ground that it was not proposed and seconded by the requisite numbers of proposers and seconders. This point was examined exhaustively by this Court in the case of very petitioner now before us against the former President Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy reported in Charan Lal Sahu Vs. Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, 1978 (2) SCC 500 and it was held that:

"The result of a careful consideration by us of the provisions mentioned above is that we think that, the procedure or manner for questioning the Presidential election having been laid down, the petitioner must come within the four corners of that procedure in order to have a locus standi to challenge the Presidential election and to be able to maintain this petition. If he neither is nor can claim to be a candidate, on assertions made by him in his petition itself, he would be lacking the right to question the election of Shri Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy as Presidential of India. The effect of the provision of Sections 14 (1), 14 (2) and 14 (3) and 14A (1) of the Act, read with Order XXXIX, Rules

2 and 5 of the Rules of this Court, is that the petition before us is barred because the petitioner has not got the required locus srtandi to maintain it."

Again in Charan Lal Sahu Vs. Giani Zail Singh, 1984 (1) SCC 390, the point raised by the petitioner on the second limb of Section 13 (a) of the Act defining the candidate to mean; "claims to have been duly nominated as a candidate" was rejected. Rejecting the said contention this Court observed:

"The petitioners, however, contend that even if it is held that they were not duly nominated as candidates, their petitions cannot be dismissed on that ground since they "claim to have been duly nominated". It is true that, in the matter of claim to candidacy, a person who claims to have been duly nominated is on par with a person who, in fact, was duly nominated. But, the claim to have been duly nominated cannot be made by a person whose nomination paper does not comply with the mandatory requirements of Section 5-B (1)(a) of the Act. That is to say, a person whose nomination paper, admittedly, was not subscribed by the requisite number of electors as proposers and seconders cannot claim that he was duly nominated. Such a claim can only be made by a person who can show that his nomination paper conformed to the provisions of Section 5-B and yet it was rejected, that is, wrongly rejected by the Returning Officer. To illustrate, if the Returning Officer rejects a nomination paper on the ground that one of the ten subscribers who had proposed the nomination is not an elector, the petitioner can claim to have been duly nominated if he proves that the said proposer was in fact an 'elector'.

The question regarding locus standi was examined for the third time in the election petition filed by the petitioner in Charan Lal Sahu Vs. K.R. Narayanan & Ors., 1998 (1) SCC 56, it was again reiterated that:

"In view of the decisions referred to above, it must be held that neither of the petitioners was a "candidate"

as the said expression is defined in Section 2 (d) of the Act since neither of them had been duly nominated nor could he claim to have been nominated as a candidate inasmuch as the nomination papers filed by both of them did not comply with the mandatory requirements of Section 5 B (1)(a) of the Act and the nomination paper of Petitioner 2 was filed without complying with the requirements of Section 5 B (2) of the Act. On that view it must be held that neither of the petitioners has the locus standi to maintain the petition."

"As regards the submission urged on behalf of the petitioners regarding the validity of the provisions of Sections 5-B and 5-C as they stood prior to 5-6-1997, it may be stated that the validity of the said provisions has been upheld by this Court in Charan Lal Sahu V. Fakruddin Ali Ahmed; Charan Lal Sahu v S. Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy and Charan Lal Sahu V. Giani Zail Singh. Petitioner 1 was a party to all these decisions. The challenge to the validity of the amendments introduced by the Ordinance and the Amendment Act has been negatived by this Court in the three writ petitions referred to above, two out of which were filed by Petitioner 1. The petitioners have urged that in this petition the challenge to the validity of Section 5-B is based on the ground that it violates the principle of secrecy of ballot incorporated in Article 55 (3) of the Constitution and that this ground has not been considered in the earlier decisions. We do not find any merit in this contention. The requirement in Section 5-B (1)(a) about the nomination paper being subscribed by a particular number of electors as proposers and seconders does not, in any way, involve the infringement of the secrecy of ballot at the election inasmuch as the elector who has subscribed the nomination paper of a person as a proposer or as a seconder is free to cast his vote in favour of any candidate and is not bound to vote for the person whose nomination paper he has subscribed as a proposer or seconder. The identity of the candidate in whose favour he has cast his vote is not be disclosed."