A. P. Sen, J. - 1. By this application under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution, the petitioner Satna Central Co-operative and Land Mortgage Bank Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "the petitioner Bank"), seeks the issue of a writ in the nature of Certiorari for quashing an order of the Board of Revenue, Madhya Pradesh, dated 2nd April 1968, and for an appropriate writ or direction in the nature of Mandamus to restrain the authorities from giving effect to the impugned order, in the manner threatened.

2. The relevant facts leading to this application are these. By the order impugned, the Board of Revenue, Madhya Pradesh has in a second appeal under section 77 (2) of the Madhya Pradesh Co-operative Societies Act, 1960 (Act No. XVII of 1961), (hereinafter referred to as "the Act"), reversed an order passed in first appeal by the Joint Registrar of the Co-operative Societies, confirming the acceptance of resignation of the respondent No.1, Puranlal Agrawal, against whom the petitioner Bank had instituted an enquiry into certain charges, by a resolution of the Board of Directors passed at its meeting held on 13th July 1965 and instead, set aside the resolution on the grounds that: (i) the Board of Directors of the petitioner Bank was not during the material time, duly constituted and (ii) there was no quorum for its meeting held on 13th July 1965 at which the said resolution was passed. Upon these findings, the Board of Revenue has set aside the resolution of the Board of Directors accepting the resignation of the said Puranlal as being legally invalid and, accordingly directed his re-instatement to his post forthwith, with a direction for payment of all the back wages and other allowances for the period during which he was "illegally kept out of office", and held that his resignation had still so far not been "legally accepted".

3. The operative part of the impugned order of the Board of Revenue proceeds on these lines. According to Bye-law No. 30 of the bye-laws, there has to be constituted a Board of Directors consisting of 18 persons. Of these, the Registrar, Co-operative Societies or his nominee not below the rank of the Assistant Registrar is one. It appears that at the time when the meeting of the Board was held on 13-7-1965, the Board consisted only of 11 members and was not fully constituted for some reason or the other, as prescribed in bye-law No. 30. Bye-law No. 35 prescribes that 2/5th of members of the Board of Directors shall form a quorum. If the total strength of the Board of Directors is taken as the basis, then 7 members will constitute the quorum. On behalf of the Bank it was urged that number of members required for the quorum should be determined with reference to the actual number of Directors and not with reference to the prescribed strength of 18. Thus, as against the strength of 11 members, the number of members required to be present for the quorum was 5. According to the Board of Revenue, the number of persons required to be present to form a proper quorum had to be determined "with reference to the total number of members of the Board", as prescribed under Bye-law No. 30, and not the number of the Directors actually working in the Board. The Board of Revenue further held that any other view will lead to impossible situation as according its view, a quorum for proper functioning of any representative body was prescribed to ensure that some minimum number of persons take part in deliberations and take decisions on behalf of the Board they represent. Thereafter, the Board proceeded to deal with the question, whether Bank Inspector P. M. Gore who was in current charge of the duties of the Assistant Registrar, and held that he was not entitled to participate in the meeting as a nominee of the Registrar under Byelaw No. 30 (vi). Eventually, the Board of Revenue came to the conclusion that Resolution No.8 of the Board of Directors, accepting the resignation of the respondent No. 1 was not legally and v