VIJAYATAI SUBHASH GAVHANE Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner Nos. 1 and 2 are Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Sillod Panchayat Samiti and remaining petitioners are the members of the said Samiti. A motion of no confidence was moved by respondent Nos. 5 to 16 against petitioner Nos. 1 and 2 and the Collector at Aurangabad, acting on the same motion, as submitted under section 72 (2) of the Maharashtra Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samitis Act, 1961 (the Act for short) issued a notice under sub-section (3) of the said section on 14th December, 1999 and a meeting was scheduled on 7th January, 2000. The meeting was held, as scheduled, and the motion was carried and passed with 12 to 9 votes. The Panchayat Samiti has in all 22 members. One Shri Mane Shankar Rama remained absent and remaining 21 members were present.

(2.) THE petitioners have challenged the proceedings of the said meeting and contended that the motion of no confidence had lapsed and the resolution of no confidence was passed illegally and in breach of the provisions of the Act. The challenge is more particularly raised on the following points :

(3.) ADMITTEDLY, there are no separate rules framed for conducting the meeting of no confidence under the Act. The scheme of section 72 of the Act does not mandate that in case of separate no confidence motions being moved against the Chairman and Vice-Chairman, the Collector must issue separate notices to the members and a composite notice would be per-se invalid. What is not incorporated in the law cannot be expected to be implicit in it and the composite notice issued by the Collector cannot be vitiated on such a ground. The notice issued by the Collector to the individual members makes it abundantly clear that there was a motion of no confidence against the Chairman as well as Vice-Chairman and so long as such a communication was explicit the members were aware of the fact that there were two separate motions of no confidence and they were individually against the Chairman and Vice-Chairman.