Letters Patent Appeal No.317 of 2011 -1- **** IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Letters Patent Appeal No.317 of 2011 Date of decision: 10.5.2011 The Gurdaspur Central Cooperative Bank Ltd. ...Appellant Versus State of Punjab and others ...Respondents CORAM: HON'BLE MR.JUSTICE ADARSH KUMAR GOEL, ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE HON'BLE MR.JUSTICE AJAY KUMAR MITTAL Present: Mr. Harit Sharma, Advocate for the appellant. Mr. Vikas Singh, Advocate for respondent no.1. Mr. J.S.Puri, Addl. Advocate General, Punjab for respondents No. 2 and 3. ADARSH KUMAR GOEL, ACJ. 1. This appeal has been preferred against the order of learned Single Judge dated 14.2.2011 setting aside the order of Registrar, Cooperative Societies, Punjab under Section 26-B of the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act, 1961 (hereinafter referred to as “the Act”) declaring that writ petitioner-respondent no.1 to have ceased to be member of the Board of Directors of the Gurdaspur Central Cooperative Bank Ltd. 2. The writ petitioner was elected as Director of the Gurdaspur Cooperative Labour and Construction Union Ltd. but Letters Patent Appeal No.317 of 2011 -2- **** before that he was already Director of the Gurdaspur Central Cooperative Bank Ltd. Gurdaspur. However, he resigned from the Gurdaspur Cooperative Labour and Construction Union Ltd. with effect from 13.6.2009. The Registrar declared his membership of the Board of Directors of Gurdaspur Central Cooperative Bank Ltd. to have ceased on account of bar under Section 26-B of the Act. In the writ petition, the said order dated 26.4.2009 was challenged on the ground that the petitioner having already resigned from the Gurdaspur Cooperative Labour and Construction Union Ltd., the bar under Section 26-B of the Act was not attracted. This plea has been upheld by the learned Single Judge as follows:- “Therefore, to my mind, the restrictions contained in Section 26-B of the Act are only relevant in regard to the membership of Co-operative Union (2nd society), from which, the resignation of the petitioner had already been accepted (Annexure P4), much prior to the passing of the impugned order (Annexure P7) and the disqualification contained under Section 26-B cannot legally be made applicable to the directorship/membership of the petitioner of the Cooperative Bank (Ist society). Thus, the contrary arguments of learned counsel for contesting respondents “stricto sensu” deserve to be and are hereby repelled under the present set of circumstances and the law laid down by the Hon'ble Apex Court in Jagdish Singh's case (supra) “mutatis mutandis” is applicable to Letters Patent Appeal No.317 of 2011 -3- **** the facts of the present case and is the complete answer to the problem in hand.” 3. It is not disputed that disqualification contained under Section 26-B of the Act was no longer applicable after the writ petitioner had resigned from one of the two societies. Moreover, it is stated that even in the second society, the membership of the writ petitioner is expiring in June, 2011. Thus, no ground to interfere with the impugned order is made out. 4. The appeal is dismissed. (Adarsh Kumar Goel) Acting Chief Justice May 10, 2011 (Ajay Kumar Mittal) Pka Judge