There exists a distinction between the ‘Office’ and the ‘functions’ on the basis of the decision of the Supreme Court in Kanta Kathurina v. Manak Chand Surana, AIR. 1970 SC. 694. In the said case, the question arose whether an Advocate who was appointed specially to conduct a suit or a case or other proceeding by or against the State Govt. in any Court or Tribunal, holds an ‘office of profit’ so as to disqualify him from contesting election in the Legislative Assembly in view of the bar created under Art. 191 of the Constn. In the said judgment, the Supreme Court quoted with approval the observations of Justice Raulat, in 1922 (8 Tax Cases, 221 at p. 235). The relevant portion reads ae follows:
“Now it is argued, and to my mind argued most forcibly, that shows that what those who use the language of the Act of 1842 meant when they spoke of an office or an employment, was an office or employment which was a subsisting, permanent, substantive position, which had an existence independent from the person who filled it, which went on and was filled in succession by successive holders; and if you merely had a man who was engaged on whatever terms, to do duties which were assigned to him, his employment to do those duties did not create an office to which those duties were attached. He merely was employed to do certain things and that is an end of it; and if there was no office or employment existing in the case as a thing, the so-called office or employment was merely an aggregate of the activities of the particular man for the time being. And I think myself that that is sound. I am not going to decide that, because I think I ought not to in the state of the authorities, but my own view is that the people in 1842 who used this language meant by an office a substantive thing that existed apart from the holder.”