On 24 August 2026, the Supreme Court revived an election petition that had been thrown out before it ever reached a trial — not because a judge found the underlying allegations weak, but because a returned Member of Parliament’s lawyers had persuaded a High Court that a notary’s rubber stamp, and the precise wording stamped on a few dozen photocopied pages, could end the case before it began. A bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran disagreed, and in doing so restated a decades-old but frequently forgotten principle of Indian election law: a defect in paperwork is not the same thing as a defect in the case.

The ruling, in Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury v. Kripanath Mallah & Ors. (2026 INSC 915), matters well beyond the two men named in its cause title. It is a reminder that Parliament built a specific, narrow gate for killing election petitions at the threshold — and that gate does not open for every clerical slip a respondent’s lawyers can find.

The Karimganj Contest

In the 2024 Lok Sabha general elections, Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Kripanath Mallah was declared elected from the Karimganj Parliamentary Constituency (No. 7) in Assam, defeating Indian National Congress candidate and senior advocate Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury by a margin of 18,360 votes — Mallah polled 5,45,093 votes to Choudhury’s 5,26,733, according to reporting by LiveLaw and Bar and Bench.

Choudhury filed an election petition before the Gauhati High Court challenging Mallah’s victory, alleging corrupt practices under Section 123 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 (RP Act) — including claims of rigging and booth capturing at polling stations across the constituency, as reported at the time — the kind of conduct Section 123 treats as capable of voiding a result even after the votes are counted and certified.

The High Court’s Threshold Dismissal

Rather than contest those allegations on their merits, Mallah moved an application under Section 86 read with Sections 81 and 83 of the RP Act and Section 151 of the Code of Civil Procedure, asking the Gauhati High Court to throw out the petition without a trial. He raised three objections:

  1. The copy of the election petition served on him bore the endorsement “certified to be true copy” on some pages and “attested to be true copy” on others — inconsistent attestation, he argued, that violated Section 81(3).
  2. Form 25 — the mandatory affidavit that must accompany any election petition alleging corrupt practice, prescribed under Rule 94A of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 — was not properly attested by a notary or a Commissioner of Oaths on the copy served on him.
  3. Several pages were missing from the copy he received.

On 4 April 2025, the Gauhati High Court rejected the missing-pages argument but accepted the Form 25 attestation objection, and dismissed the entire election petition at the threshold. Choudhury appealed to the Supreme Court under Section 116A of the RP Act, which provides a direct appeal from a High Court’s order in an election matter.

The Statutory Scheme the High Court Overlooked

The Supreme Court’s reversal turns on a distinction that Section 86 of the RP Act draws deliberately, and that the Gauhati High Court’s order blurred. Section 86(1) reads: “The High Court shall dismiss an election petition which does not comply with the provisions of section 81 or section 82 or section 117” — a closed, three-provision list. Section 83, which governs the contents of the petition (including the proviso requiring a Form 25 affidavit where corrupt practice is alleged), is conspicuously absent from that list.

This is not an accident of drafting. In the Constitution Bench decision in Murarka Radhey Shyam Ram Kumar v. Roop Singh Rathore (1964 AIR 1545), decided in 1963, the Supreme Court had already held that a defect in the verification required under Section 83(1)(c) cannot be treated as fatal to the petition, precisely because Section 86 does not list Section 83 among the grounds for mandatory dismissal. The Court built on this in Dr. Shipra v. Shanti Lal Khoiwal (1996), holding that even where a Form 25 affidavit is genuinely defective, the consequence is narrower than outright dismissal: only the corrupt-practice allegations fall away, while any other independently pleaded grounds for challenging the election — over-counting, improper rejection of votes, disqualification of the returned candidate, and so on — must still be tried on their merits.

Applying this, the bench in Choudhury’s case worked through each of Mallah’s three objections:

“Attested” and “Certified” Convey the Same Meaning

On the inconsistent endorsements, the Court held that Section 81(3) of the RP Act “does not prescribe any particular form of attestation” — it requires only that copies be attested by the petitioner, under his own signature, to be true copies. Relying on its earlier ruling in F.A. Sapa v. Singora, the Court found that the phrases “attested to be true copy” and “certified to be true copy” — and the differently worded rubber stamps used on different pages — “convey the same meaning.” There was, in substance, no defect at all.

A Defective Form 25 Does Not Sink the Whole Petition

On the Form 25 objection — the one ground the High Court had actually relied on — the Court held that “a defect under Section 83 does not entail peremptory dismissal under Section 86,” and that a defect in the Form 25 affidavit does not, by itself, require the peremptory dismissal of the entire petition. Because Section 86(1)’s mandatory-dismissal trigger is confined to Sections 81, 82 and 117, a shortfall in the corrupt-practice affidavit — even if real — cannot, by itself, extinguish a petition that also raises other grounds.

The Court did not simply wave the objection away, however. It directed the Gauhati High Court, on remand, to first verify whether the original Form 25 filed with the petition carried proper attestation by a Commissioner of Affidavits. If it did, the corrupt-practice allegations survive and the matter proceeds on full merits. If the original itself lacked attestation, only the corrupt-practice allegations must be struck out — the remainder of Choudhury’s challenge to the election still goes to trial.

The Missing Pages

The Gauhati High Court had already rejected Mallah’s missing-pages objection as an afterthought, and the Supreme Court saw no reason to revisit that finding.

Reversal and Remand

Concluding that “we find absolutely no reason to sustain the order of the High Court,” the bench set aside the 4 April 2025 dismissal and restored the election petition to the Gauhati High Court’s file, directing it to proceed as outlined above — a straightforward instruction, but one that sends a two-year-old election challenge back to square one, more than halfway through the very Lok Sabha term whose legitimacy it questions.

Why This Matters

Election petitions occupy an unusual place in Indian civil procedure: Parliament wanted them decided quickly and did not want technicalities to swallow substance, yet it also wanted a firm gate against genuinely non-compliant petitions clogging the courts for years while a possibly illegitimately elected representative continues to sit in Parliament or a state legislature. Sections 81, 82, 86 and 117 are that gate — and Choudhury reaffirms that the gate is exactly as wide (or as narrow) as Parliament drew it, no wider.

For litigants and their counsel, the practical lesson is direct: a returned candidate’s threshold application is not a free pass to defeat a petition on paperwork alone, and courts are expected to ask whether an objection falls within Section 86’s closed list before treating it as fatal. For petitioners, the countervailing caution is just as real — Form 25 still has to be filed and still has to be attested properly if the corrupt-practice allegations are to be tried; the ruling only prevents a defect there from also dooming every other ground pleaded in the petition. And for the wider system, the case is a reminder of a less flattering fact: an election petition filed in 2024 has, as of this ruling, still not had a single day of trial on its merits — it has instead spent two years litigating whether it may be heard at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did the Supreme Court actually decide in this case?

It set aside the Gauhati High Court’s order dismissing Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury’s election petition against BJP MP Kripanath Mallah at the threshold, holding that the defects the High Court relied on — inconsistent attestation stamps and an allegedly unattested Form 25 affidavit — did not fall within Section 86(1)’s mandatory-dismissal grounds. The petition has been restored for trial before the High Court.

Does this mean Kripanath Mallah’s election has been declared void?

No. The Supreme Court has not ruled on the merits of the corrupt-practice allegations at all. It has only held that the petition cannot be thrown out without a trial on the grounds the High Court used. The Gauhati High Court will now examine the evidence and decide the case on its merits.

What is Form 25 and why did it matter here?

Form 25, prescribed under Rule 94A of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, is the affidavit that Section 83(1)’s proviso requires an election petitioner to file in support of any allegation of corrupt practice. If it is defective or unattested, courts have held that only the corrupt-practice allegations may be struck from the petition — not the entire case.

Why isn’t a Form 25 defect automatically fatal to an election petition?

Because Section 86(1) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which makes dismissal mandatory, applies only to non-compliance with Sections 81, 82 or 117 — a closed list that does not include Section 83, the provision Form 25 is tied to. This distinction goes back to the Constitution Bench’s 1963 ruling in Murarka Radhey Shyam Ram Kumar v. Roop Singh Rathore.

What happens next in this case?

The Gauhati High Court must first verify whether the original Form 25 affidavit filed with the petition was properly attested. If it was, the corrupt-practice allegations proceed to trial along with the rest of the petition; if it was not, those specific allegations are struck out but any other grounds Choudhury has pleaded against the election must still be tried on merits.

Does this ruling make it easier to challenge elections on technical grounds in future?

Not exactly — it makes it harder to defeat a genuine challenge on technical grounds. The ruling doesn’t lower the bar for what a petitioner must plead or prove; it simply confirms that courts cannot expand Section 86’s narrow, listed grounds for automatic dismissal to cover objections — like inconsistent rubber-stamp wording — that Parliament never put there.

Sources