ANASUYA NAGARAJ Vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These writ petitions are heard and disposed of to-gether as the second of these petitions is filed consequent upon the further developments pursuant to the first of these petitions.

(2.) The facts, briefly stated, are as follows: - The petitioner in the first of these petitions is an elected Councillor of the City Municipal Council, Chikkaballapur. It transpires that several Councillors of the City Municipal Council had submitted a representation on 18.3.2010, to call for a meeting of the Council to consider a motion for want of confidence in the President of the Council. The Commissioner, second respondent herein, of the City Municipal Council had, in turn, placed the requisition before the President, the fourth respondent herein, on 19.3.2010, to call for a meeting on a specified date as required under Section 47(2) of the Karnataka Municipalities Act, 1964 (hereinafter referred to as `the Act' for brevity). The fourth respondent, however, had directed the second respondent to convene a meeting on 17.4.2010, by a communication dated 3.4.2010. The second respondent had thereafter issued notice of the proposed meeting to all concerned, as on 5.4.2010. The petitioner has questioned the validity of the said notice. In the second of these petitions, the petitioner is the President of the City Municipal Council, Chikkaballapur himself. It is his grievance that though there was a representation submitted by several Councillors requesting that a meeting of the Council be convened to consider a no- confidence motion against himself, which was placed before him on 19.3.2010, the second respondent had, however, proceeded on leave thereafter between the period 27.3.2010 and 11.4.2010. In the result, as there was no other person appointed as In- charge officer, till 31.3.2010, he was in a position to direct the convening of a meeting only as per direction dated 3.4.2010. As this was not in consonance with the requirement under Section 47(2) of the Act, which he had realised in retrospect, he had issued a further direction on 15.4.2010, to recall the notice of meeting scheduled for 17.4.2010. But it is the complaint of the petitioner that respondent No. 2 did not act upon the direction and though the petitioner did bring it to the attention of this court of his intention to recall the notice of the meeting the meeting having been convened on 17.4.2010 pursuant to a direction by this court, the petitioner questions the validity of the procedure followed and claims that in his opinion he had acted in violation of the mandatory requirement of Section 47(2) of the Act and therefore, the proceedings of the Council dated 17.4.2010 are rendered void.

(3.) Shri Padmanabha Mahale, Senior Advocate appearing for the Counsel for the petitioner in the first of these petitions and Shri Madhusudan R Naik, Senior Advocate appearing for the Counsel for the petitioner in the second of the petitions would both urge that the short point of consideration in these petitions is whether, in terms of Section 47(2) of the Act, the President of the Municipal Council could, on the basis of the representations of the Councillors received on 18.3.2010 and placed before him on 19.3.2010, direct as on 3.4.2010 the convening of a meeting scheduled on 17.4,2010. Especially, when the President himself had expressed that he had apparently acted contrary to the requirement under Section 47(2) of the Act and had sought to withdraw the notice as intimated to this court during the course of these proceedings. Hence, notwithstanding the fact that the meeting scheduled on 17.4.2010 was in fact convened by virtue of a direction of this Court, the legality of the proceedings in the above background is the only point for consideration. Reliance is sought to be placed on the judgment of the Supreme Court in Chandra Kishore Jha vs. Mahavir Prasad, AIR 1999 Supreme Court 3558, to contend that, it is a well settled salutary principle that if a statute provides for a thing to be done in a particular manner then it has to be done in that manner and in no other manner.