S. C. Mathur, J. - (1.) THE question raised by the petitioners in this petition is whether the Registrar, Chit Funds, Firms and Societies, U. P., Lucknow, opposite party No. 1, had the jurisdiction to decide the dispute which heeded by his impugned order dated 8-12-1978, contained in Annexure No. 13 to the writ petition. THE dispute has arisen in the circumstances hereinafter ndicated.
(2.) THE Board of Management, Rajarshi Tandon Laghu Madhyamik Vidyalaya, Upadhyapur, Patti, Pratapgarh, was registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 on 7-9-1968. It appears that at the time of registration the Memorandum of the Association of the Society and the Rules and Regulations of the Society were also filed with the Registrar. Copies of the Memorandum and the Rules and Regulations have been filed as Annexures Nos. 1-A and 2 to the Writ Petition. Annexure No. 1-A contains the names of the office bearers of the Society; petitioner No. 1 Maha Narayan Pandey is shown as the Manager and Bharath Singh is shown as Secretary and Annexure No. 2 contains the names of nine persons who have been described as founder members of the Society. THEse nine persons are : Sarvashri Ram Raj Shukla, Maha Narayan Pandey, Jagan Nath Tripathi, Bharath Singh, Raj Narayan Pandey, Yamuna Prasad Singh, Raj Pati Pandey, Ram Yaresh Tripathi and Rajit Ram Dubey. Paragraph 4-E of Annexure No. 2 states that the founder members shall be the life members of the Board of Management. Paragraph 8 provides that Maha Narayan Pandey (Petitioner No. 1) shall be the life long Manager of the School, the Board as well as the Managing Committee. It further states that he will be authorised to nominate any person to act as the Manager after him. THEre is no dispute between the parties that upto 5-4-1978, petitioner No. 1 continued to act as Manager of the Institution. THE dispute arose thereafter. According to Sri Meva Ram Tewari, opposite party No. 2 a meeting of the Society was held on 5-4-1978 at which petitioner No. 1 was asked to submit account of the money withdrawn by him and to stop his arbitrariness" in managing the affairs of the Society whereupon on 6-4-1978 petitioner No. 1 submitted his resignation from life membership of the Society and also from life-managership and nominated opposite party No. 2 as his successor. It is further the case of the opposite party No. 2 that the resignation was placed at the meeting of the Managing Committee held on 7-4-1978 when it was accepted and the nomination made by petitioner No. 1 in favour of opposite party No. 2 was also recognised. It is further urged that the Rules of the Society were amended so as to bring them in conformity with Rule 10 (Chha) of Chapter VI of the Basic School Niyamawali and thereafter an application was made to the Registrar, opposite party No. 1 for renewal of Registration and also for recognition of the amended Rules. A new list of the members of the Managing Committee was also sent. Basic Shiksha Adhikari is alleged to have recognised opposite party No. 2 as the member. Against the order of the Basic Shiksha Adhikari recognising opposite party No. 2 as the Manager, petitioner No. 1 preferred appeal to the Regional Deputy Director of Education. THE petitioner No. 1 on 12-5-1978 sent a telegram to the Registrar not to act on the application submitted to him by opposite party No. 2. Despite this telegram renewal of registration was granted to the Society on 31-5-1978 on the basis of the application moved by opposite party No. 2. On 30-6-1978 petitioner No. 1 moved an application before opposite party No. 1 for cancelling the renewal. On this application, the Registrar issued notice to petitioner No. 1 as well as to opposite party No. 2 to substantiate their respective claims. It may be mentioned that before the Registrar the claim of petitioner No. 1 was that he continued to be Manager and the plea of the opposite party No. 2 that he (the petitioner No. 1) had submitted resignation was incorrect. On this basis it was the further claim of petitioner No. 1 that neither the memorandum of the association had been amended nor the Rules nor there had been any change in the composition of the committee of the management. Whlie the application dated 30-6-1978 filed by petitioner no. 1 was still pending before the Registrar, the appeal preferred by petitioner No. 1 before the Regional Deputy Director of Education came up for disposal. THE Regional Deputy Director of Education, by his order dated 6-9-1978, set aside the order of the District Basic Education Officer and provided that his own order will be operative till the matter is be decided by the Registrar. In other words the Regional Deputy Director of Education came to the conclusion that the dispute raised by petitioner No. 1 was beyond his cognizance and that it should be decided by the Registrar, opposite party No. J, in accordance with law. Against this order of the Regional Deputy Director of Education, opposite party No. 2 preferred writ petition No. 2082 of 1978 in this Court. THE plea of opposite party No. 2 was that the Regional Deputy Director of Education had no jurisdiction over Basic Education and, therefore, he had no jurisdiction to set aside the order of the Basic Education Officer by which opposite party No. 2 had been recognised as the Manager of the Institution. In this writ petition an application for interim relief was also filed by opposite party No. 2 whereupon the Basic Education Officer was appointed to manage the affairs of the institution during the pendency of the writ petition. This Court while dealing with the application for interim relief took note of the fact that the dispute was already engaging the attention of the Registrar, opposite party No. 1. On 28-11-1978 when the matter came up before this Court it was noticed that the case was fixed before the Registrar on 4-12-1978. THE counsel for the parties made statement that they will not seek any adjournment from the Registrar. On this statement the writ petition was ordered to be listed on 12-12-1978. THEreafter the Registrar passed the impugned order contained in Annexure No. 13 on 8-12-1978. THE writ petition came up before this Court on 14-12-1978 when it was dismissed as infructuous in view of order passed by the Registrar. On 16-1-1979 the present writ petition was filed by Sri Maha Narayan Pandey. In this writ petition Sri Maha Narayan Pandey also impleaded Board of Management, Rajarshi Tandon Laghu Madhyamik Vidyalaya as petitioner No. 2. This petitioner No. 2 was impleaded through petitioner No. 1 himself. In the present writ petition the grievance of the petitioners is that the Registrar could not decide the dispute in respect of the right of petitioner No. 1 to continue in office as Manager of the society which right was claimed by the petitioner but was denied by opposite party No. 1 and, therefore, his order is invalid and without jurisdiction. It was pressed that this dispute could be decided only by the Prescribed Authority under section 25 (1) of the Societies Registration Act as amended in its application to the State of U. P. through the Societies Registration (Uttar Pradesh Amendment) Act, 1975 (U. P. Act No. 52 of 1975). At the time of oral arguments this was the only dispute raised by Sri S. L. Varma, learned counsel for the petitioners. The writ petition has been contested by Mewa Ram Tewari, opposite party No. 2 only. According to him the Registrar has not decided any dispute which falls within the ambit of Section 25 (1) of the Act, but has decided the matter relating to renewal of registration and recognition of the management and of the amended Rules of the Society and, therefore, the order is not beyond the scope of jurisdiction exercisable by the Registrar under the provisions of the Societies Registration Act. On behalf of opposite party No. 2 Sri B. C. Saxena stressed that there was no dispute relating to election of office bearers of the Society. According to the learned counsel the enquiry made by the Registrar was covered by Sections 3 and 4-A of the Societies Registration Act as amended in its application to the State of Uttar Pradesh by Act No. 52 of 1975. It was also pressed that petitioner No. 1 was estopped from challenging the jurisdiction of Registrar as he himself approached the Registrar for the resolution of the dispute. The plea of estoppel was pressed also on the ground that in writ petition No. 2082 of 1978 petitioner No. 1 had never objected to the jurisdiction of the Registrar to deal with the matter.
(3.) BEFORE proceeding further it will be appropriate to reproduce subsection (1) of Section 25 which reads as follows :- "25. Disputes regarding election of office bearers-(1). The Prescribed Authority may, on a reference made to it by the Registrar or by at least one-fourth of the members of a society registered in Uttar Pradesh, hear and decide in summary manner any doubt or dispute in respect of the election, or continuance in office of an office-bearer of such society, and may pass such orders in respect thereof as it deems fit........." (Emphasis supplied) Under the above provision the Prescribed Authority has jurisdiction to decide in a summary manner any doubt or dispute-(1) in respect of the election and (2) or continuance in office of an office bearer. In order, therefore, to attract the jurisdiction of the Prescribed Authority under this provision it is not necessary that the dispute must relate to election of an office bearer. The dispute may even relate to the continuance in office of an office bearer. It is not the case of opposite party No. 2 that he was elected to the office of the Manager. His case is that he became Manager on the nomination made by petitioner No. i himself. As such there was no dispute before the Registrar in respect of election to the office of Manager. We have to see whether the Registrar has, by his impugned order, resolved any issue or dispute in respect of continuance in office of an office-bearer of the Society. This would require scrutiny of the impugned order passed by the Registrar.;