RATTAN LAL Vs. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) ELECTIONS to the Municipal Committee, Bawal, District Rewari (for short the Committee) were held on December 28, 1994 and the names of the eleven members who were elected were notified by the Haryana State Election Commission on January 10, 1995. Seven of the. petitioners are elected members of the Committee whereas petitioner 8 is a nominated member who was subsequently nominated by the State Government on February 20, 1995. It may be mentioned that the State Government had nominated five members including petitioners 8 thereby raising the total number of members of the Committees to sixteen. Election of the President and Vice-President of the Committee took place on February 17, 1995 and Raghbar Dayal son of Shri Matadin was elected President. All questions which come before any meeting of a Committee are required to be decided, except as otherwise provided by the Haryana Municipal Act, 1973 or the rules framed thereunder (hereinafter called the Act and the Rules respectively) by a majority of the votes of the members present and in the case of equality of votes, the Chairman of the meeting has a second or casting vote. On August 12, 1995 a meeting of the Committee was held which was attended by twelve members including the petitioners. In this meeting there were various items on the agenda and each item was disposed of by the members by passing a resolution approving or disapproving the recommendation suggestion contained in the agenda. Agenda items at Sr. Nos. 1,3 9 and 11 in regard to which there is now a dispute between the parties pertained to the following matters:

(2.) THE decisions of the Committee taken on item Nos. 1, 3, 9 and 11 were not to the liking of the President and it appears that the members of the Committee are equally divided half of whom are siding with the President whereas the other eight are in the opposite camp. After the meeting of the Committee on August 12, 1995, the President made a complaint in writing to the Deputy Commissioner, Rewari on August 31, 1995 stating therein that some of the members who were not well disposed towards him because of his being a member of a Backward class are creating all sorts of obstacles in his functioning as President and that have formed a group, they were not allowing him to carry out any development work. He further complained that they were not approving any expenditure incurred by him as President. Specific reference was made to the resolutions passed by the Committee in its meeting held on August 12, 1995 in regard to items at Sr. Nos. 1, 3, 9 and 11 of the agenda. The prayer made in the complaint was that the Deputy Commissioner should in exercise of his powers under Section 246 of the Act suspend the resolutions pertaining to those items. The Deputy Commissioner then suspended the aforesaid four resolutions and communicated his decision to the Committee as per his letter dated October 13, 1995 (Annexure P-2 with the writ petition ). It is this decision of the Deputy Commissioner suspending the resolutions of the Committee on the asking of the President that has been challenged by the petitioners in the present petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution. a prayer has also been made that since the Committee did not pass the budget in the meeting held on March 28, 1995, the President who has been arrayed as respondent 3 in the writ petition be directed not to spend any amount from the funds of the Committee. It is also averred in the petition that the provisions of Section 249 of the Act have not been complied with inasmuch as after the Deputy Commissioner suspended the resolutions passed by the Committee on August 12, 1995, he failed to forward forthwith his order to the Commissioner nor did he send any statement of reasons for suspending the resolutions. According to the petitioners, the Committee was not afforded any opportunity to furnish its explanation in the matter and thus the Commissioner had no opportunity to confirm modify or rescind the order of suspension of the resolutions.

(3.) WE have heard learned counsel for the parties and perused the original record produced by the respondents at the time of hearing. It has been noticed that after the Committee held its meeting on August 12, 1995, President (respondent 3) made a complaint to the Deputy Commissioner to the effect that some of the members of the Committee had ganged up to remove him from office as he was, a members of a Backward class. He further stated that the members were not allowing him to carry out any development work and that they were raising all sorts of obstacles in his functioning as President and for these reasons he requested the Deputy Commissioner to suspend resolution 1,3,9 and 11 passed by the Committee in the aforesaid meeting. Obviously, these resolutions were not to the liking of the President and the majority of the members present in the meeting had disapproved the various estimates of expenditure. According to the petitioners President had been incurring expenditure in the exercise of his emergency powers under Section 35 of the Act and was not getting a prior approval for the same from the Committee. As regards the dewatering of the rain water that had collected in parts of the Town, it appears that the members did not approve the execution of work that was going on as according to them rainy water was being drained out in a pond that is being used by the animals of the area and, therefore it was not advisable to have that dirty water thrown. According to the petitioners, it was necessary to give powers to some person/persons to operate the Bank account of the Committee and for that purpose they authorised president or Vice-President along with another member. There is no gainsaying the fact that all these decisions taken by the majority of members in the meeting were not liked by the President and whether they were right and whether those decisions should have been taken is not the concern of this court. The fact remains that proposals of the President, could not go through in the meeting. He then complained to the Deputy Commissioner who on receipt of the complaint marked the same to the Sub Divisional Magistrate, Rewari making the following observations: