ANANT LAXMAN PUROHIT Vs. INDORE PARASPER SAHAKARI BANK LTD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS bunch of miscellaneous petitions, by the petitioners, gives rise to two short but interesting questions of law, (i) whether the Assistant Registrar is competent to determine a dispute between the financing bank and its members under Section 64 (1) of the Madhya Pradesh Co-operative Societies Act, 1960 (hereinafter referred to as 'the Act') and (ii) whether the appellate authority has jurisdiction under Section 77 of the Act to remand the matter before it to the file of the Deputy Registrar for disposal according to law?

(2.) IN order to appreciate the scope of the question, it is necessary to briefly refer to the material facts which are not only not in dispute but lie in a short compass that gave rise to this question.

(3.) PETITIONER Anant, in Miscellaneous Petition No. 270 of 1975, was a member of the Indore Paraspar Sahakari Bank Ltd. , Indore, the first respondent herein. By resolution No. 63 passed by its Board, the respondent-Society expelled the petitioner from the Society, on July 16, by removing the petitioner under Rule 18 Sub-rule (1) of the Rules framed under the Act. Aggrieved by the order of his expulsion from the respondent- society, the petitioner disputed the correctness of the order of expulsion under Section 64 (1) of the Act, before the assistant Registrar, Co-operative Societies -- the second respondent herein. The Assistant Registrar decided the dispute on November 13, 1968 in favour of the petitioner-Anant holding the expulsion order to be wrongful. The first respondent-Society preferred an appeal against the order of the Assistant registrar to the Joint Registrar who, by his order dated September 3, 1970 dismissed the appeal. The respondent-Society preferred a further appeal under section 77 of the Act to the Board of Revenue, before whom a preliminary objection to the effect that the Assistant Registrar had no jurisdiction to entertain the dispute, was raised. The Board of Revenue upheld the preliminary objection and found that the Assistant Registrar was not competent to entertain the dispute and, consequently, allowed the appeal and set aside the orders of the Assistant Registrar as well as of the Joint Registrar and remanded the dispute to the Deputy Registrar for disposal in accordance with law, by its impugned order dated March 7, 1974. Hence Miscellaneous Petitions Nos. 97 of 1975 and 77 of 1975 by the Society. The petitioner Anant filed Miscellaneous petition No. 270 of 1975 challenging the correctness of the order of the Board of Revenue entertaining the objection regarding the jurisdiction for the first time,