BALRAJ MADHOK Vs. REGISTRAR CO OPERATIVE SOCIETIES DELHI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Can a person who has a house or land for building a house in Delhi continue to remain a member of a house building co-operative society in Delhi ? This question which may affect many persons besides the petitioners arises for decision in this writ petition.

(2.) The petitioners became members of the Shakti Co-operative House Building Society (Respondent 3), a body registered under the Bombay Co-operative Societies Act, 1925 as applied to Delhi, prior to 1968. Under section 71(2)(c) and (d) of the said Act, the Chief Commissioner could make rules prescribing the matters in respect of which a society may make bye-laws and also prescribing the conditions to be complied with by persons applying for admission or admitted as members. The admission and the continuance of the petitioners as members of the society was governed by the bye-laws of the society framed in 1959. Those bye-laws did not prohabit a person who had a house or land on which a house could be built in Delhi from becoming a member. As a matter of policy, however, the Government thereafter seems to have decided that land allotted to co-operative societies should be leased out only to such members as do not have a house or a plot of land in Delhi. In 1968, therefore, model bye-laws for house building co-operative societies were framed by the Government. These bye-laws were sent to the house building co-operative societies for adoption by them. It was obvious that those co-operative societies who would not adopt these bye-laws would not be given land by the Government to be leased to their members. The respondent 3 society adopted the new bye-laws. The following bye-laws of 1968 are relevant:-

(3.) The petitioners complain that the Registrar and the Assistant Registrar of Co-operative Societies, Delhi Administration, (Respondents 1 and 2) have on the strength of these bye-laws treated the petitioners as having ceased to be members of the respondent 3 society. The petitioners do not deny that they have houses in Delhi but they contend that they were nevertheless entitled to become members of the society under the bye-laws of 1959 and that the bye-laws of 1968 have no retrospective application so as to deprive them of their membership. The main relief prayed by the petitioners, therefore, is for a declaration that they continued to be the members of the respondent 3 society and for the quashing of the action of the Respondents 1 and 2 treating them as non-members.