Hajipur Central Co-operative Union, Ltd. vs Kamla Prasad

Rowland, J.—This is an application arising out of a pending suit brought by the opposite party to recover arrears of interest on deposit made by him and members of his family in the Hajipur Central Cooperative Union, Limited, of which the plaintiff himself is a number and has been a director and secretary. The dispute is about the rate of interest. The defendant objected in the Court of the Munsif that cognizance of this dispute by the Civil Court was barred by Section 57, Bihar and Orissa Co-operative Societies Act, 1935, read with Section 48 of the same Act. The relevant words of Section 48 are:

If any dispute touching the business of a registered society arises between a member and the society, such dispute shall be referred to the Registrar;

and the relevant words in Section 57, are:

Save in so far as is expressly provided in this Act, no Civil or Revenue Court shall have any jurisdiction in respect of any ... dispute required by Section 48 to be referred to the Registrar.

On the face of the language used, it would appear that all that we have to see is that whether in the first place the dispute is one touching the business of a society; and in the second place whether it is a dispute between a member and the society. The dispute concerns the payment of interest on money advanced to the society by the plaintiff or his predecessor. I have no doubt that the borrowing of money just as much as the lending of the money is part of the business of the Society. Then as to the second point, one of the parties to the dispute is undoubtedly the Society and the plaintiff has not denied that he is a member. Indeed "member" is defined in Section 2(f) of the Act "including both a person joining in the application for the registration of a society and a person admitted to membership" afterwards, and it is not contended that this definition does not apply to the plaintiff. But the argument which is advanced before me and is apparently the same as that which found favour with the learned Munsif, is that the dispute must be not only touching the business of a society but a dispute with a member of the society in respect of business which he had with the society in his capacity as a member and which he could not have had with the society in any other capacity. It is pointed out that societies do take loans not only from their members but also from outsiders, and it is pointed out that there is nothing in the Act to debar an outsider who has advanced money to the society from bringing a suit in the civil Court to recover it; and it is contended that on this analogy a member who has advanced money to the society in the same way as an outsider could have advanced money, ought to have the same remedy as an outsider has under the law. I can find no justification in any part of the language used in the Act for putting this strained interpretation on Section 48, or in reading into that section words of a restrictive character which are not there. It is a universal principle that where an expression is defined in an Act it must be held to have throughout the Act the meaning given to it by the definition. Therefore, I cannot say that in speaking of a dispute between a member and a Society, Section 48 uses the word "member" in any more restricted sense than that which is used in the section. The suit, therefore, did not lie in the civil Court and the plaint should have been rejected. The plaintiff''s remedy was to have the dispute referred to the Registrar. The application is allowed and the petitioner is entitled to his costs, two gold mohurs.