Chandrikaben Kishor Dafda v. State of Gujarat (2026): a candidate must disclose a spouse's solely-owned property in the election affidavit

On 1 July 2026, a Bench of Justices Sanjay Karol (who authored the opinion) and Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh decided Chandrikaben Kishor Dafda v. State of Gujarat (2026 INSC 665). The appeal arose from a criminal complaint alleging that a municipal councillor had failed to disclose her husband's landholdings in her election affidavit. The judgment settles a small but recurring question of drafting — what a candidate must reveal about a spouse's assets — and then resolves a jurisdictional tangle about the section under which a Magistrate may take cognizance. The matter was remanded for fresh cognizance, the Court expressly declining to say anything on the merits.

How the dispute arose

In her 2015 filing to contest a Municipal Councillor seat, the appellant declared certain of her husband Kishorbhai Dafda's immovable property — agricultural land at Survey No. 247, Village Anjar, and a house at Plot No. 319, Sector-7, Gandhidham. She did not, however, mention four other survey numbers standing in his name in Mundra taluka, Kutch (at the villages of Ratadiya, Radha and Gundala), for which certified sale deeds and 7/12 extracts were later produced.

One Velji Namori Maheshwari complained about the omission on 17 February 2016 to the Deputy District Development Officer at Bhuj, repeated the allegation on 16 May 2017, and then moved a private complaint before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Gandhidham. By order dated 8 November 2017, the Magistrate issued summons — recording that a prima facie offence under Section 125A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 was made out, on the footing that the omission breached sub-section (2) of Section 33A of that Act. The High Court of Gujarat declined to quash the proceedings on 22 August 2025, reasoning among other things that the appellant's explanation — that she had only entered into agreements to sell — was fallacious, since an agreement to sell does not transfer title.

What the comma means

The appellant's central submission was textual. Rule 7A of the Gujarat Municipalities (Conduct of Elections) Rules, 1994 (introduced by the 2005 amendment) prescribes the affidavit form, whose Part-IX opens: "That I give hereinbelow the details of the assets (immovable, movable, bank balance, etc.) of myself, my spouse and dependents." Counsel argued that the Rule required disclosure only of property owned by the candidate, or jointly with the spouse — not property owned solely by the spouse.

The Court rejected the reading. The form calls for details of assets held by the candidate, the spouse and dependents, including what is held jointly; nowhere does it exclude property held solely by the spouse. The comma after "myself," the Court explained, is a listing comma. It separates the first item in a series, so that the governing word "of" attaches equally to each of the three categories.

On that construction, the appellant "had to have disclosed the properties owned by her spouse too." This is the portable holding: a candidate's affidavit must account for a spouse's solely-owned assets, and a candidate cannot hide behind punctuation to read the spouse's separate estate out of the form.

Did the Representation of the People Act even apply?

The next problem was that the Magistrate had taken cognizance under Section 125A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. But Section 2(d) of that Act defines "election" as an election to fill a seat in either House of Parliament or in a State Legislature. A municipal councillor's election is neither. It is governed by the Gujarat Municipalities Act — under whose Section 277 the 1994 Rules were framed — not by the central election statute. The Magistrate's invocation of Section 125A RPA was therefore a jurisdictional mislabelling.

That, ordinarily, would be a serious objection: a wrong statute, said the appellant, goes to the root of the matter. The wrinkle is that under the Gujarat Municipalities Act, the provision that once penalised false declarations (Section 9, particularly 9I) had been omitted around 1990. With no bespoke municipal offence surviving, the Court reasoned, the conduct of filing a false affidavit before a public authority falls to be dealt with under the Indian Penal Code — the complainant himself had invoked Sections 192, 193 and 196 (fabricating and using false evidence, and giving false information), and a State Election Commission order of 2011 had pointed to the false-statement and omission offences (Sections 171G and 177 IPC) for local-body elections.

A curable defect under Section 465 CrPC

Having located a live source of criminal liability, the Court held the error in the section under which cognizance was taken to be curable. Taking cognizance under the wrong section is a curable defect, it is settled, so long as the court had power to take cognizance of the correct offence — a proposition drawn from Pruthvirajsinh Nodhubha Jadeja v. Jayeshkumar Chhakaddas Shah. Cognizance, the Court reminded, is the moment a Magistrate applies his mind to the suspected commission of an offence; it is taken of the offence, not of the offender or the label attached to it — a point supported from State of Karnataka v. Pastor P. Raju through the recent Kallu Nat v. State of U.P.

The curative vehicle was Section 465 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, which prevents an order of a competent court from being upset for an error or irregularity unless a failure of justice has actually resulted. Relying on the three-judge decision in Pradeep S. Wodeyar v. State of Karnataka — which held that an irregular cognizance order, being a pre-trial act, is squarely within Section 465 — the Court held that the incorrectly labelled cognizance was saved.

The Court remanded the matter to the Magistrate to take cognizance afresh and proceed according to law, framing the underlying wrong as one that concerns everyone: a false affidavit in the electoral process is "an offence against society at large and has to be investigated." Crucially, it added a caveat that must not be read past — it expressed no opinion on the merits of whether the appellant had in fact made a false declaration. The discussion went only to the propriety of the cognizance order. The remand validly re-opens the inquiry; it does not decide guilt.

Why it matters

For candidates and their advisers, the disclosure holding is the practical takeaway: the election affidavit is not confined to what you own or co-own — a spouse's separately held property must be declared, and creative parsing of the form's punctuation will not excuse an omission. For criminal practitioners, the judgment is a clean illustration of the reach of Section 465 CrPC: a mislabelled cognizance order in a complaint case can be salvaged where the court had power to proceed under the correct offence, and objections of that kind are best raised early. Both threads converge on the same policy the Court underscored — that the purity of even the most local election is a matter of public, not merely private, concern.

Related on Valkya

• Krishnamoorthy v. Sivakumar: non-disclosure of pending criminal cases as a corrupt practice
• PUCL v. Union of India: the voter's right to information
• Public Interest Foundation v. Union of India: disclosure discipline for candidates
• Abhiram Singh v. C.D. Commachen: an appeal to religion as a corrupt practice

Sources

• Supreme Court of India, Chandrikaben Kishor Dafda v. State of Gujarat & Anr., 2026 INSC 665 (Judgment dated 1 July 2026)
• Representation of the People Act, 1951, Sections 2, 33A and 125A
• Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, Section 465