- (1.) The Punjab Self-Supporting Co-operative Societies Act, 2006 (Punjab Act No. 17 of 2010) (for short, "2006 Act") was brought on the statute book after the Act passed by the Punjab Legislature received the assent of the President of India on 5.12.2008. The preamble of this Act proclaims that it is an Act to facilitate voluntary formation of self-supporting co-operative societies as self-reliant, self help, mutually aided, autonomous, accountable, voluntary, democratic business enterprises, jointly owned, managed and controlled by members for their economic and social betterment through the financially gainful core services and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. The scheme of the Act in short shows that it has been enacted to facilitate the voluntary formation of self-supporting co-operative societies, which are essentially autonomous in character. The Act lays down that those cooperative societies which have not received any Government aid and are registered under the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act, 1961 have been given an option to convert themselves into a self-supporting co-operative society under the 2006 Act.
(2.) It is the case of the petitioner society that it was a primary cooperative society registered under the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act, 1961 (for short, "1961 Act"). It wanted to convert itself into a self supporting cooperative society under the 2006 Act. To this end it submitted an application dated 18.1.2011 to the respondent Registrar of Cooperative Societies, Punjab. The application was made in accordance with the provisions of Section 5 of the Act and all the relevant documents which were required were duly submitted including its Bye laws (P-2). The application was received by the Assistant Registrar, Cooperative Societies, SAS Nagar (Mohali) vide diary No. 17 dated 18.1.2011. The same was forwarded to the Registrar, Cooperative Societies, Punjab Chandigarh by the Assistant Registrar vide diary No. 359 dated 15.2.2011. Despite making application in accordance with the procedural provisions of the Act, the petitioner has not received any response as to the fate of its application for registration. The petitioner served a legal notice dated 26.5.2011 (P3) on the respondent for taking action on the application for grant of certificate of registration. There has been no response to the request.
(3.) Accordingly, the petitioner aggrieved by the inaction has approached this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution with the prayer that his application for registration dated 18.1.2011 should be held deemed to have been granted in terms of Section 5(9) of the Act, 2006 which mandates that if the application for registration is not disposed of within a period of 60 days or the Registrar fails to communicate the order of refusal within that period, the application is deemed to have been accepted for registration in accordance with the provisions of the Act after the expiration of a period of 90 days from the date of receipt of the application. That period is long over.;