K SRINIVAS PRESIDENT FISHERMEN COOPERATIVE SOCIETY MIRYALGUDA NALGONDA DISTRICT Vs. COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES HYDERABAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE relief sought for in this writ petition is for a mandamus to declare the show cause notice issued by the Deputy Director of Fisheries, Nalgonda, dated 04-02-2008, as contrary to the provisions of the A. P. Cooperative Societies Act, 1964, arbitrary and in violation of principles of natural justice.

(2.) FACTS, in brief, are that the petitioner is the President of the Fishermen Cooperative Society, Miryalaguda, Nalgonda district. He was elected as such, along with the directors of the managing committee, by the general body of the society, at the instance of the Person-lncharge Committee, on 25-02-2005. On the basis of a complaint levelled against the petitioner by respondents 4 and 5, the Deputy Director of Fisheries, nalgonda, issued notice dated 30-04-2007 asking him to appear, along with the records of the Society, on 09-05-2007. In the said notice, the petitioner was alleged not to have distributed the income derived from fishing to all the members, to have been running the business for his own benefit with the income of the society and to have threatened the members of the society that he was the president upto 2010, that nobody could do anything and that, if necessary, he would remove the members from their membership. The Deputy Director of Fisheries issued another notice dated 11. 05. 2007, which the petitioner alleged to be based on different grounds. The petitioner was asked therein to show cause why another President should not be elected indirectly within one week.

(3.) THESE notices were the subject matter of challenge in W. P. No. 10784 of 2007 and this Court, by order dated 09-07-2007, noted that the grounds mentioned in the notice dated 11 -05-2007 were totally different from the grounds mentioned in the earlier notice dated 30-04-2007, that the Deputy Director of Fisheries had not mentioned the provision under which he proposed to take further action, that the records disclosed that the authority, who conducted the election to the petitioner-Society in February, 2005, was not aware of the amendment, that he had proceeded to conduct the election through direct process and it was only two years subsequent to the election that the second respondent had raised this ground. This Court further held that, even assuming that the election of the President of the Society took place through direct means, it was not revealed what prejudice any individual, or the government, had suffered, that resolution of the disputes, relating to the election, was entrusted to a totally different agency under the Act and that the second respondent was not conferred with any power in this regard. This Court held that the impugned proceedings could not be sustained and, accordingly, set aside the said proceedings.