Judgment

S.B. Sinha, J.-Background Facts:

‘Nilgiris’ is a hill district in the State of Tamil Nadu. Mettupalayam is a small town situate in Nilgiris. The villagers of the surrounding villages for their livelihood depend on growing of vegetables and tea. With a view to see that the small vegetable growers are not exploited by the vegetable merchants, a society known as ‘Nilgiris Cooperative Marketing Society Limited’ (Society for short) was formed as far back as in 1935 with only 116 members.

2. The Society, however, grew in course of time and at present it has about 22000 members. The memberships of the Society are of two categories. In the first category only the vegetable or food growers, agricultural cooperative credit societies and agricultural improvement societies are A-class members having voting rights; whereas traders, commission agents and merchants dealing in the commodities grown by the agriculturalists are classified as B-class members. They have no right to vote or participate in the management of the Society. The B-class members only, however, are entitled to take part in auctions held in the marketing yards of the Society. Any dispute between the seller member and the