B. SUDERSHAN REDDY, J.

( 1 ) THE petitioner is the President of Balapanur Distributory Committee-I. The elections to the Managing Committee were conducted by the District Collector as provided for under Sections 4 and 8 of the A. P. Fanners Management of Irrigation Systems Act, 1997 (for short the Act ). The petitioner was served with a notice on 24-12-1998 by the second respondent requesting him to attend the meeting proposed to be held on 2-1-1999 at the office of the D. L. Sub-division, Ankalamma Gudur to replace the petitioner as President of Balapanur Distributory Committee-I. It is the said notice that is impugned in this writ petition on various grounds.

( 2 ) SECTION 5 of the Act authorises the Government to delineate every command area of the irrigation system comprising of one or more Water Users Associations and declare the same to be a distributory area for the purpose of this Act, There shall be a distributory committee for every distributory area and all the Presidents of the Water User Associations in that distributory area shall constitute general body of the Committee. Section 6 of the Act provides for the election of the President and constitution of the Managing Committee for every distributory committee. Section 10 of the Act prescribes procedure for recall of Chairman or President or Member of a Managing Committee, as the case may be, of the Fanners Organisation and the Farmers Organisation shall mean and include the Water Users Association at the primary level, distributory committee at the secondary level and project committee at the project level.

( 3 ) IN the instant writ petition, we are concerned with the Fanners Organisation at the secondary level. According to the procedure prescribed under Section 10 of the Act a motion for recalling a Chairman or President or a Member of a Managing Committee of Farmers Organisation is required to be made by giving a written notice as prescribed and signed by not less than one-third of the total number of members of the organisation. If the motion is carried with the support of the majority of the members present for voting at the meeting of the general body specially convened for the purpose, the District Collector or the Government as the case may be shall by order remove the concerned from office. However, no notice of motion under Section 10 can be made within one year of the date of assumption of the office by the person against whom the motion is sought to be moved.

( 4 ) THE Government of Andhra Pradesh in purported exercise of the power conferred by Section 43 read with Sections 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 28, 29 and 31 of the Act made rules known as the Andhra Pradesh Farmers Management of Irrigation Systems Rules, 1997 (for short the Rules ). Rule 8 of the Rules says that the competent authority to receive the recall notice in respect of a Chairman or the President or a Member of the Managing Committee of a Farmers Organisation shall be the district Collector or an officer nominated by him, and provides for procedure, the mode and method of signing the recall notice and calling for the meeting of the voters or members of the general body and issuance of proceedings to recall the concerned Chairman, President or Member of the respective Farmers Organisation.

( 5 ) A reading of Section 10 of the Act and Rule 8 of the Rules would make it abundantly clear that the competent authority to receive the recall notice is the district Collector or the officer nominated by him. It is also required to notice at this stage that Section 21 of the Act authorises the Government to appoint an officer of the Irrigation and Command Area Development Department or any other Department or Corporation, including Irrigation Development Corporation, to be the competent authority to every Fanners Organisations for the purposes of this Act and such competent authority appointed shall be responsible to the respective Farmers Organisation for impl

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