blanket ban on litigative interference during the process of the election, clamped down by Article 329(b) of the Constitutionwe do not propose to enquire into or pronounce upon the factual complex or the (1) A.I.T. 1952 S.C. 16. 284 lesser legal tangles, but only narrate the necessary circumstances of the case to get a hang of the major issues which we intend adjudicating. Moreover, the scope of any actual investigation in the event of controversion in any petition under Article 226 is ordinarily limited and we have before us an appeal from the High Court dismissing a petition under Article 226 on the score that such a proceeding is constitutionally out of bounds for any court, having regard to the mandatory embargo. in Article329(b). We should not,except in exceptional circumstances, breach the recognised, though not inflexible, boundaries of Article 226 sitting in appeal, even assuming the maintainability of such a petition. Indeed, we should have expected the High Court to have considered the basic jurisdictional issue first, and not last as it did, and avoided sallying forth into a discussion and decision on the merits, selfcontradicting its own holding that it had no jurisdiction even to entertain the petition. The learned Judges observed :
