NARENDRA VINAYAKRAO MANDLOI Vs. STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) WITH a view to make provision for better regulation of buying and selling of agricultural produce and the establishment and proper administration of markets for agricultural produce in the State of Madhya Pradesh, the State Legislature enacted the Madhya Pradesh Krishi Upaj Mandi Adhiniyam, 1972 (No. 24 of 1973 ). Section 7 of the Act requires that every market area shall have a market committee having jurisdiction over the entire market area. Such market committee is to be constituted in accordance with Section 11 of the Act. No market committee shall consist of less than eight and more than twenty members, as the State Government may, by notification, specify. These members are to be drawn from different sources. There shall be elected members (number of which again shall be fixed by notification by the State Government) representing agriculturists, representative of traders, a member of State Legislative Assembly returned from the constituency in which the market area falls, a representative of a co-operative marketing society functioning in the market area committee elected by the managing committee of the society, a Government Officer to be nominated by the Director, representative of weighman and hammals, and an agriculturist who secures first position in any crop competition orgainsed by the Central Government. Section 11 (5) of the Act prescribes the tenure of the market committee. This sub-section, as it originally stood, read as follows :

(2.) THE aforesaid sub-section (5) of Section 11 has been amended from time to time, First of such amendments, relevant for our purposes, came, vide Act No. 45 of 1984 with effect from 19-11-1984. By that amendment, the term of the market committee was extended by six months, by substituting the words "for a period of five years and six months" for the words "for a period of five years" as originally enacted. The second amendment came by Act No. 6 of 1985 with effect from 234-1985. A lease for a period of another six months was granted to the existing market committees by substituting the words "six years" in place of the words "five and half years" as introduced in Section 11 (5) by the first Amendment Act of 1984. Then came Amendment Act No. 11 of 1985. Changes were made in various subsections of Section 11. With those changes we are not concerned for the present. It will be sufficient to mention that the then existing proviso to Section 11 (5) was omitted. That omission is also not very relevant for our purposes. Section 11 (5) was further amended by Act No. 24 of 1986 with effect from 21-7-1986. By Section 9 of this Amendment Act, the existing sub-section (5) of Section 11 was omitted and in its place, the following has been substituted :

(3.) THE petitioners are members of the different market committees in the State and were elected to those committees prior to the amendment Act No. 24 of 1986. Their contention, therefore, is that the omission of the proviso to Section 11 (5), by Act No. 24 of 1988, does not curtail the tenure of six years of those market committees of which they are members. They assert that they are entitled to complete full term of six years which shall expire in November, 1991.