PATEL TALSHABHAI PURABHAI Vs. AUTHORISED OFFICER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These petitions are involving addition in or alteration of the voters' list prepared for elections of Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) at Dhanera and Bhabar; and common legal issues having arisen and the matters having been argued together, they are decided by this common judgment. Election for APMC, Bhabar is to be held on 18.3.2011 and for APMC, Dhanera it is to be held on 30.3.2011, according to the election programme declared earlier. Before addressing the common legal issues, the factual controversies and contentions in several groups of petitions may be summarized as under:

(2.) As far as APMC, Dhanera is concerned, SCA Nos.2282 to 2301 of 2011 have voiced the grievance that managing committees of the petitioner co-operative societies are excluded from the voters' list of co-operative marketing society constituency by the impugned orders dated 29.01.2011 and 15.02.2011 of the authorized officer which are made after scanning the functioning of the co-operative societies and finding them to be not genuinely engaged in marketing activity, although they held licences for trading agricultural produce in the market area. The authorized officer has, in the impugned proceedings, called for and examined record and accounts of last three years of working of the petitioner co-operative societies. By virtue of the impugned orders, 302 voters of 20 such co-operative societies are alleged to have been illegally excluded from the total constituency consisting of 440 voters.

(3.) In the matters related to APMC, Bhabar, in SCA Nos.850, 851, 852 and 902 of 2011, grievance is made about exclusion from the voters' list of agriculturists' constituency on the ground that the society concerned had not dispensed agricultural credit and in SCA Nos.952, 953, 954, 956 and 2330 of 2011, the challenge is to inclusion in the voters' list of the respondent societies on the ground that more members of the managing committees of the respondent societies than permitted by their bye-laws were nominated or that the society concerned was not actually dispensing agricultural credit. Apart from other contentions, grounds of violation of principles of natural justice and politically motivated or illegal exercise of power are agitated for the petitioners; and the respondents have questioned maintainability of the petitions and defended the impugned orders as bona fide, legal and within the limits of exercise of power by the authorized officer.