REVENUE DIVISIONAL OFFICER Vs. PUSHPAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS appeal is directed against an order of Ramaprasada Rao, J. who held that co -option of a woman member to a Panchayat under the provisions of the Tamil Nadu Panchayats Act. (XXXV of 1958) is an election, though it took the form of a resolution of the Panchayat. On that view, he held that Inspector of Panchayats acted in excess of his jurisdiction under Section 147 of the Act in rescinding the resolution. We find ourselves in agreement with this decision of the learned Judge.

(2.) THIS case relates to Pechikulam Panchyat, Madurai Dist. The Panchayat had a strength of seven, each of whom was elected. But there was no woman among them. In accordance with Section 15 (4), the first respondent was by a majority resolution of the Panchayat at a meeting held on 25 -9 -1970, co -opted. On a complaint made by one of the members the Panchayat, the Inspector, in exercise of his powers under Section 147 cancelled the resolution on 29 -12 - 1970. The ground was that there was a fraudulent counting of the votes on the resolution. We are not at the moment concerned with this aspect. The aggrieved co -opted member successfully petitioned to this court order Article 226 of the Constitution, Ramaprasada Rao J. holding that the proper remedy for any aggrieved member against a resolution was to file an election petition and not to have it rescinded by the Inspector under Section 147.

(3.) AS we indicated, in our opinion, the later view is the correct one and we would be prepared to hold so even without the rules. Section 14 contemplates a Panchayat to be as elected body, for it says the members of the Panchayat shall be elected in the manner prescribed. The proviso to this section is rather significant because a co -opted member for purpose of this section is also regarded as one among the elected members. The statutory understanding through Section 14 itself is that co -option involves election and the member co -opted is an elected member of the Panchayat. Nowhere in the Act do we find any justification that a Panchayat member is ushered into the Panchayat otherwise than by election which need not necessarily be always by the same kind of process. Section 15 deals with a variety of matters which include reservation of seats for members of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and co -option of women. The last item 1 to wit, co -option of women would arise only if the Panchayat as elected does not happen to have a woman member. In that case, the Panchyat is enjoined, it is indeed entitled, to co -opt to itself one qualified woman. When it speaks of Panchayat's entitlement to co - opt, to our mind, it at once implies the consensus of the members in their entirety, or of the majority of those members, which is ascertained by a process of vote taking. That is what precisely the word 'co -option' means ordinarily. For instance the Concise Oxford Dictionary says that co -opt means elect into body by votes of existing members. The word is derived from opt which means choose and the choice necessarily involves ascertaining the wishes of each of the members of the Panchayat already elected into the body politic. In this respect, we have, therefore, to differ from the view expressed by Srinivasan J. who, as we said, was unable to find any elective process in the contemplation of sub -section (4) of Section 15.