The jurisdiction to supersede a co-operative society lies solely with the designated Registrar, and failure to adhere to statutory notice requirements invalidates such orders.

1. So much as already been written and spoken by this Court in the past in the area relating to supersession of societies under the prescription of S.32 of the Co-operative Societies Act that one would have thought that there is nothing left to be unsaid. That an issue would present itself in this area as res nova is a virtual surprise and this is one such case appearing to provide virgin issues, apparently never having engaged the attention of this Court in the past.

2. There are two writ petitions that I am considering together in this judgment. Both of them pitch the same issues, which are hypostysed on a challenge to the order issued by the General Manager, District Industries Centre, Thrissur, superseding the elected management of the Indian Coffee Board Workers' Co-operative Society No. 4227, Thrissur, (hereinafter referred to as 'the Society', for the sake of brevity). The first among them namely, W. P. (C) No. 6414/2017 has been ostensibly filed by the Society itself and the second of them namely, W. P. (C) No. 9370/2017 has been filed by the members of the elected Managing Committee of the Society. Since both these writ petitions involve similar issues, have mounted challenge to the same order and since resolution of the disputes in both these would remain dependant on each other, I deem it appropriate and apposite to consider them together and dispose them of jointly. However for the sake of convenience I would treat W. P. (C) No. 9370/2017 as the lead case and all references in this judgment to parties and documents would be, unless otherwise specified, as per the rank and status available in the said writ petition.

3. I have heard the learned Additional Advocate General, appearing for the State of Kerala and the officers of the District Industries Centre, who are made respondents herein; Sri. P. C. Sasidharan, appearing for the Administrator appointed for the Society; Sri. George Poonthottam, and Sri. V. Rajendran (Perumbavoor), learned counsel appearing for the petitioners in the two writ petitions.

4. At the time when these writ petitions were taken up for hearing, a preliminary objection was raised by Sri. P. C. Sasidharan, learned counsel for the Administrator that W. P. (C) No. 6414/2017 cannot be allowed to be prosecuted further, since the Administrator of the Society, who is now in charge of its management, does not intend to do so. He, therefore, prays that this writ petition be dismissed. I will deal with this contention slightly lower in this judgment, when I consider the various other issues, which, I am in any case obligated to consider, in view of the fact that there is no such technical objection against the maintainability of W. P. (C) No. 9370/2017. I say this because when I deal with W. P. (C) No. 9370/2017, I will inevitably have to deal with some of the issues that have been raised in W. P. (C) No. 6414/2017 since they are concatenated, in its nature, to each other.

5. First an apercus of the most essential facts:

6. The Society in question was initially registered as a Co-operative society under the provisions of the Travancore Cochin Literary Scientific Charitable Societies Registration Act, 1955. When the Kerala Co-operative Societies Act, 1969 (hereinafter referred to as 'the Act') came into force, the Society became statutorily reckoned as a deemed Co-operative society under its provisions and, therefore, subject to t