578 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
underlines this. The Returning Officer—whoever is appointed beccomes a persona designata —must perform personally those functions. Then the proviso says that although he is a persona designata and must perform some of the functions mentioned in the proviso, in certain circumstances, namely, those mentioned in the last sentence of the proviso, the other persons who are working under him, that is, the Assistant Returning Officers shall become persona designata and step into his shoes. That is what it means.
Pandit Manishwar Datt Upadhyay : Which of them ?
Dr. Ambedkar: Any of them may step into his shoes. I do not understand it but my hon. friend Mr. Santhanam said that at the most there might be one. Well we will take the other contingency that there are two. Supposing if two are sitting, both of them are persona designata. Any one can go to A or to B and both of them can discharge the functions of a Returning Officer.
Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava: The difficulty will arise about scrutiny of the nomination papers by each Assistant Returning Officer acting as Returning Officer.
Dr. Ambedkar: I am sorry and I want to draw attention to the fact that rather inadvertently I accepted Mr. Naziruddin Ahmad’s amendment for substituting the word ‘functions’ for the word ‘function’ I think that is not correct. The original word is singular, that is, ‘function’ is the correct one and that is where the difficulty has arisen because he may be absent on the day of nomination. The Returning Officer may be present on the day of scrutiny and so the scrutiny will be done by him.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: This can be corrected only in the third reading by amendment.
Dr. Ambedkar: I want to draw attention to the fact that because an Assistant Returning Officer accepts the nomination papers he must also perform the function of scrutiny and he must also perform the function of counting. That is not so.