SARJOO PROSAD C. J.: This application under Art. 226 read with Art. 227 of the Constitution of India is directed against an order dated 21-1-1956, passed by Sri S. K. Dutta, District Judge at Silchar, in Election Case No. 6 of 1955. (2) The petitioner, who is a defeated candidate, filed an election petition under S. 6, Assam Local Self-Government Act (25 of 1953), challenging the election of the returned candidate Sri Nirmal Kumar Purkayastha, respondent No. 2 to this ap­plication, on various grounds. The election im­pugned relates to constituency No. IX Badarpur I of the Karimganj Sub-division and was held with reference to the Karimganj Local Board. It ap­pears that there were three candidates nominated for the election, of whom Nirmal Kumar purka-yastha (respondent No 2) secured 1142 votes, it being the highest number of votes polled; the petitioner Rakesh Chandra Das secured 878 votes, while the other candidate, Sri Nanda Kumar Das, who is also a respondent to this application, se­cured 763 votes. (3) The main grounds on which the election was challenged by the petitioner are:- (1) that the returning officer had acted illegally in accept­ing the nomination of the respondent Nanda Kumar Das and (2) that the Deputy Commis­sioner had not given due publicity to the location of the polling station in Circle No. 13, which was one of the circles in the Badarpur Police Station, for purposes of polling, as a result of which there was much confusion and the voters in that circle were not able to exercise their right of franchise. It is contended that these illegalities have ma­terially affected the result of the election. It is unnecessary to refer to the other objections raised before the learned District judge because they are not pertinent to our present discussion; and in support of his application Mr. Deb has not thought it fit to take up our time with those contentions which have now been set at rest by the decision of the learned District Judge. We are, therefore, concerned with the two main objections to which I have referred earlier. Deb has not thought it fit to take up our time with those contentions which have now been set at rest by the decision of the learned District Judge. We are, therefore, concerned with the two main objections to which I have referred earlier. (4) In dealing with the question of illegal no­mination, the learned District Judge found that the acceptance of the nomination of Nanda Ku­mar Das by the returning officer was improper, but he was of the view that that did not material­ly affect the result of the election and, therefore, he refused to set aside the election on that ground. On the other question also, the learned District Judge held that there was violation of R. 14 of the rules in not giving due notice to the public of the polling stations. He pointed out that the date for polling was 10-4-55, but the notices thereof were received by the Secretaries of the panchayats on 8-4-55, that is to say, only a couple of days earlier. He naturally characterised this short notice as bad enough; but he pointed out that was not all. The constituency comprises four different circles, circle No. 13 being one of them. It ap­peared from the evidence" of a Court witness that notices of the polling stations in respect of the said circles were sent from the office of the Re­turning Officer to the Officer-in-Charge, Badarpur Police Station, who sent them to the Secretary of the Bhange Rural Panchayat, but the said Se­cretary, who also deposed in the case, did not take any action to give publicity to the notices in circle No. 13, as that circle fell outside his jurisdiction. The circle, in fact, lay within the jurisdiction of Shri Gauri-Badarpur Rural Pan­chayat, and the Secretary of this panchayat did not receive any such notice in respect of circle No. 13. The learned District Judge also found that in previous elections the polling for circle No. 13 used to be held at villages Duttapara and Kuchilagur, but this time the latter polling station was abolished, and as the voters of circle No. 13 did not have any notice of the location of the polling station, many of them went to Kuchilagur and could not cast their votes. He also found that only 40 per cent of the voters of this circle actu­ally exercised their right of franchise and voted on the occasion. He also found that only 40 per cent of the voters of this circle actu­ally exercised their right of franchise and voted on the occasion. But here again, in spite of these findings, the learned District Judge was of-the view that these irregularities did not materially affect the result of the election, and accordingly he rejected the prayer of the petitioner to set aside the election in question. (5) Section 8, Assam Local Self Government Act, provides for the circumstances under which an election can be set aside by the Judge to whom an election petition is presented. Clauses (c) and (d) of sub-sec. (1) of that section are relevant to this enquiry. It is provided in these clauses that If the Judge, after holding an enquiry, is satisfied that the result of the election has been materi­ally affected by any non-compliance with the provisions of this Act or the rules made there­under, or the result of the election has been mate­rially affected by the improper acceptance or refusal of a candidate's nomination he should declare the election of such candidate to be void. It is, therefore, necessary to come to a find­ing, in view of the irregularities complained of or the illegal acceptance of the nomination, whether the result of the election had been materially affected. Mr. Deb on behalf of the petitioner urges that in view of his own findings, the learn­ed District Judge was in error in not arriving at the inference which was the only irresistible in­ference in the circumstances that on account of those illegalities the result of the election had been materially affected. On the first question. It is contended by Mr. Deb that having found that the nomination of Sri Nanda Kumar Das had been wrongly accepted, the learned judge should have held that the' result of the election could not but have been materially affected in those circumstances. He submits that a large number of votes, namely as many as 763 votes, which were polled by that candidate, had been wasted, and if those Votes had not been so wasted, there was' every possibility of the petitioner being elected, polling the highest number of votes. The difference in the votes polled by the respondent Nirmal Kumar and those by the petitioner was a difference of only 264 votes. We find some difficulty in accept­ing the contention of Mr. The difference in the votes polled by the respondent Nirmal Kumar and those by the petitioner was a difference of only 264 votes. We find some difficulty in accept­ing the contention of Mr. Deb on this point in view of the decision of the Supreme Court in "Vashist Narain Sharma v. Dev Chandra", AIR 1954 SC 513 (A). If the matter were completely at large, we might possibly have given much weight to the argument of the learned C9unsel, because We feel that it is not possible to ignore the vital effect of such a large body of votes being wasted in an election of this nature and hold, in spite of it, that the result of the election could not have been materially affected. We are, however, faced with the observation of the Supreme Court in that Judgment that mere increase or decrease in the total number of votes secured by the returned candidate is not a criterion for determining whe­ther the result of the election has been materially affected; but that there should be definite proof of the fact that the wasted votes would have been distributed in such a manner between the contest­ing candidates as would have brought about the defeat of the returned candidate. Their Lordships further observed that it could not be held that, the mere fact that the wasted votes were greater than the margin of votes between the returned candidate and the candidate securing the next highest number of votes, must lead to the necessary inference that the result of the election must have been mate­rially affected. In their opinion, it was a matter which had to be proved, and the onus to prove it lay upon the petitioner, and if the petitioner who challenged the election, failed to adduce sa­tisfactory evidence to enable the Court to find in his favour on the point, the inevitable result would be that the Court or Tribunal would not interfere in his favour and would allow the elec­tion to stand. We realise that in many cases it may not be possible to lead positive evidence on the point, and the circumstances of the case may alone lead to the inference that the number of votes wasted was such as to affect materially the election issue; but it is put of place for Us to express any fur­ther opinion on the point. Mr. Mr. Goswami for the respondents has taken his stand' upon the Supreme Court decision and has submitted that in this case before us also there was no satisfactory evi­dence adduced by the petitioner to enable the Court to find in his favour that the wasted votes must have been exercised to his benefit in case the invalid nomination had not "been accepted by the Returning Officer so as to affect substantially the result of the election. We are, therefore, un­able to lend our support for the present to the contention of Mr. Deb that the acceptance of the invalid nomination vitiated the election. (6) In regard to the next contention, it seems to us that on the material findings at which the learned District Judge has arrived, there could be no question that the result of the election had been materially affected. It is obvious that on account of the failure on the part of the autho­rities to observe the provisions of Rule 14 framed under S. 94, sub-sec (2) (i) of the Local Self Government Act, a large number of voters as many as almost 60 per cent, of them-have not been able to exercise the right of franchise. It stands to reason that if there had been due pub­lication of the notice and if these persons had exercised their right of franchise, the result of the election would have been very seriously affect­ed. Of course, we could not foresee which candi­date could have won or lost because that would be almost an impossible position to visualise, the voting being by secret ballot; taut there could be no doubt that a large majority of the voters was prevented from voting in connection with this election and if they had voted, the results might have been different. Rule 14 of the rules is man­datory in terms. It says that the Deputy Commissioner shall divide each constituency into polling areas so as to give all electors such reasonable facilities as are practicable in the circumstances, and shall ap­point polling stations for those areas and shall give public notice of the location of the polling stations with the names of villages, chaukidari circles and mauzas, the voters of which are en­titled to vote at each station. The notice, there­fore, has to be precise and should definitely indi­cate the particulars which are required by that rule. The notice, there­fore, has to be precise and should definitely indi­cate the particulars which are required by that rule. Here, as the learned District judge himself points out, the notice was sent only a couple of days earlier and that also to the Secretary of a panchayat who was not concerned with the circle in question, and who naturally did not take any action for the publication of the notice. He has further found that many of the voters who went to exercise their right of franchise, had to return disappointed because the Kuchilagur polling station had been abolished unlike the ar­rangements at previous elections. In these circumstances, the irresistible conclusion is that the result of the election was materially affected on account of the failure of the authorities to com­ply with the provisions of this rule. An illustra­tion in point is to be found in Hammond's "Elec­tion Cases", page 629. In that case, there was only a difference of seven votes between the rival candidates at the election, yet it was held that where the change of site of a polling station was not sufficiently advertise and the irregularity disenfranchised a portion of the electorate, the factor materially affected the result of the elec­tion and, as such, it was declared void. The learned District Judge, however, seems to minimise the effect of the illegality and the find­ings at which he arrived on certain speculative assumptions. He appears to rely on some case from Dibrugarh in which the election was not invalidated by the non-publication of the date, place and time of election. We have not come across this decision ourselves, and the learned counsel for the respondents has not been able to draw our attention to it. But even if there had been any such case, we do not think we would have been prepared to accept it as good law in view of the findings of the learned District Judge himself. He also observes that the petitioner must have appointed a polling agent at Kuchilagur; besides, he was a Congress candidate and it was not credible that having regard to the party ma­chinery at his disposal, he would not know about the location of the polling stations and give publi­city to the same. He also observes that the petitioner must have appointed a polling agent at Kuchilagur; besides, he was a Congress candidate and it was not credible that having regard to the party ma­chinery at his disposal, he would not know about the location of the polling stations and give publi­city to the same. He also refers to the circum­stance that there was a keen contest in the elec­tion and the officers of each party must have given due publicity to the polling stations. We think with due deference, that these reasonings are al­together speculative and beside the point. Keen contest or canvassing might happen in every case of election, but that does not justify the violation of the rules for due publicity about the polling station as mentioned in rule 14 of the rules; nor does it take away the effect of the learned Judge's finding that a large body of voters had not voted in that constituency, and there was evidence to show that many voters had turned away disappointed because they did not find a polling station at the place where they thought there would be one. In these circumstances, the only possible inference is that the result of the election had been materially affected as a result of the failure to observe the provisions of Rule 14 of the rules for the conduct of the election and, as such, the learned District Judge was bound to set aside the election under S. 8 (1) (c), Assam Local Self Government Act. (7) We think that on the face of the judgment itself, there was a clear error of jurisdiction on the part of the learned District Judge in refusing to set aside the election. Accordingly we are con­strained to, make the Rule absolute. We direct that the order of the learned District Judge re­fusing to set aside the election should be reversed and the election should be set aside. In the cir­cumstances, a fresh election should be held. There will be no order as to costs of this applica­tion. (8) DEKA, J. ; I agree. Election set aside.