Writ petitions against cooperative societies are not maintainable unless they perform public functions or can be classified as public authorities as per Article 12.

ORDER

1. These two writ petitions have challenged the steps initiated by the respondents for the purposes of election of delegates, of the Northern Zone Railway Employees Thrift and Credit Society Limited¹ . The aforesaid cooperative society is admittedly governed by the Multi State Cooperative Societies, Act 2002² read with the Rules and the Byelaws framed thereunder. The communication of 03 February 2020 set out the calendar for the election process which was to be undertaken. In terms of that notice, the election process was to commence on 03 February 2020 and the final list of candidates to be displayed on 09 March 2020. The notice further specified the number of delegates to be elected as being 120 and also set out their distribution amongst the various branches of the cooperative society.

2. It appears that the lead writ petition came up for consideration before a learned Judge of the Court on 23 March 2020. Issuing notice on the petition, the learned Judge observed that without going into the merits of the matter, bearing in mind the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lock down, it would not be practicable to hold elections. The Court accordingly proceeded to stay all further processes of elections as envisaged and detailed in the impugned communication of 03 February 2020. It is that interim order which has continued to hold the field till these two writ petitions were taken up for final disposal.

3. The respondents in the writ petitions have raised preliminary objections both on the ground of the writ petition being not maintainable against the cooperative society as also on the ground that once the election process had been set in motion, there was no justification for a writ petition having been entertained and, in any case, of an interim order being passed interdicting the election process itself.

4. Insofar as the question of the maintainability of the writ petition is concerned, learned counsels appearing for the respondents lead by Mr. Parikh learned senior counsel have contended that undisputedly the cooperative society cannot be termed as State within the meaning of Article 12 of the Constitution nor can it be described as being a public body against which a writ petition would be maintainable. It was pointed out that the cooperative society had been formed to espouse and protect the interests of employees of the Indian Railways and its functions were clearly private in character. In view of the aforesaid, it was submitted that the writ petitions would not lie. Mr. Parikh firstly placed reliance on the decision rendered by this Court in NZRECTC Society Limited vs. Central Registrar Cooperative Society and Ors., AIR 2012 Delhi 112, to submit that the aforesaid decision had categorically found that the cooperative society was not a public authority and therefore the issue thus stands conclusively settled against the petitioners here. It becomes pertinent to note that the decision in NZRECTC was essentially dealing with the question of whether the cooperative society in question could be described as a public authority and thus fall within the ambit of the Right to Information Act, 2005. However, the Court will deal with the said judgment in the latter parts of this order.

5. Mr. Parikh further placed reliance on the judgment rendered by a Division Bench of the Court in Mukesh Kumar vs. The Administrator [NZRE], FAO (OS) 318/2015, in support of his contention that all disputes touching upon or relating to the election process could be questioned in a