Members elected by virtue of their office as Managing Committee members of cooperative societies or village panchayats cease to be members of the APMC upon ceasing to hold such office, as per the proviso to Section 15(1) of the APMC Act.

JUDGMENT

AMIT B. BORKAR, J.

This reference has been made to the Full Bench, pursuant to the order dated 8th November, 2019 of the learned Single of this Court for considering the following question of law :

“Whether the members of the APMC who are elected by the members of the Managing Committee of the Agricultural Credit Societies and Multi purpose Cooperative Societies or the members of the Village Panchayat functioning in the market area cease to be members of the APMC on ceasing to be the members of the Managing Committee of the societies or the members of the Village Panchayat, in view of the proviso to section 15 of the Act?”.

2. The learned Single Judge felt the need to make this reference, in view of conflicting decisions of the Division Benches of this Court, one holding that the members of the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (for short “APMC”) who are elected by the Managing Committees of the Societies would cease to be members of the APMC, in the event, they ceased to be members of the Managing Committees of their parent Society. (Purshottam s/o Pandharinath Tonpe vs. Agriculture Produce Market Committee, Wardha and ors., reported in 2013(6) Mh.L.J. 688 and Hukumchand s/o Govindrao Amdhare and ors. vs. The Collector, Nagpur and ors., (Writ Petition No. 3130/2015) and then another decision, in which it is held that even though tenure of the Managing Committee members of the Cooperative Society may have expired, the representative capacity of Managing Committee Member is not wiped out and he continues to represent the said Society even thereafter. (Writ Petition No. 4092 of 2013 : Gajanan Ramkisan Pacharne vs. The Hon’ble State Minister and ors. decided on 19-1-2005).

3. We do not propose to refer to the factual matrix of the case in detail. However, it would be appropriate to state the background in which, Writ Petition No. 4030 of 2018 came to be filed in this Court. In this Writ Petition, the petitioners were elected as Director and Vice-Chairman respectively of the respondent No. 1 Agricultural Produce Market Committee in the election held on 18th January, 2017, by virtue of they being Managing Committee Members of a Cooperative Society. The term of the petitioner No. 1 came to an end on 29th April, 2017. The term of petitioner No. 2 came to an end around August, 2017. The respondent No. 3 passed an order on 15th September, 2017 removing the petitioners from their posts as Director and Vice Chairman respectively on the premise that the petitioners ceased to be Managing Committee members of their parent Cooperative Societies. The appeal against the said order being dismissed by the respondent No. 1, the petitioners approached this Court by invoking Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India. The learned Single Judge noticing conflicting views of the Division Benches of this Court directed placing the issue before the Hon’ble the Chief Justice for the constitution of larger Bench. That is how the present petition has been placed before us for answering the reference.

4. We have heard all the learned Advocates appearing for the respective parties on the aforesaid question referred to us.

5. Shri R. L. Khapre, learned Senior Advocate, submitted that the member of the marketing committee continues to function even after he ceases to be a member of the Managing Committee of the Cooperative Society. He submitted that proviso to section 15(1) of the Maharashtra Agricultural Produce Marketing (Development and Regulation) Act, 1963 (for short “the APMC Act”) does not apply to such member. He further submitted that proviso to section 15(1) of the APMC Act will apply to section 13 of the APMC Act save and except sub-clause (a) of subsection (1) of section 13. He submitted that Rules 35 and 36 of the Maharashtra Agricultural Produce Marketing (Development and Regulation) Rules, 1967, cannot take away right created under section 13(1) of the APMC Act. He submitted that the petitioners are not elected as representatives o