244 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Dr. Ambedkar : That is a matter which you may discuss but that is how the Bill proceeds upon. There will therefore be some two-member constituencies. The other constituencies will be single-member constituencies. In the two-member constituencies the voting will be by distributive vote.
Now I come to the Election Tribunal.
Pandit Maitra : May I know whether in no case there will be three-member constituencies?
Dr. Ambedkar : I am going to say at the end that these are not matters which can be taken as concluded.
With regard to the Election Tribunal the position is this. There are of course a variety of ways in which an election tribunal could be constituted. Either you can constitute an election tribunal whose authority will be final, without any right of appeal, or you can have a tribunal whose decision will be subject to an appeal. As I said, on this there cannot be any dogma. One has to decide in the light of public opinion. But the Bill proceeds upon the assumption that there should be some sort of a right of appeal to the High Court. It is also assumed that the public has a greater confidence in the official machinery for the disposal of election disputes. Nonofficials, it is said, may have a bias which may prejudice the ultimate judgment in the case of an election dispute. Consequently what the Bill proposes to do is to have a two-member tribunal. The Chairman will be the District Judge and the other member will be a judicial officer. He may not be a District Judge. He may be some other judicial officer, but an official. The point is this that it is difficult to imagine at this stage what would be the number of election petitions. In view of the fact that the people of this country are so enamoured of politics so far as I see—having almost a passion for politics—I surmise that there might be a very large number of election petitions. If that happens and if you wish that the machinery to decide appeals should be official, the number of District Judges that may be available today would be found to be considerably insufficient to cope with the task. It is therefore that the second Member is described as a Judicial Officer. He may not be of the rank of the District Judge. In addition to that, it has been provided that the High Courts in the different provinces may prepare a list of