Court No. - 39
Case :- WRIT - A No. - 16323 of 2018 Petitioner :- Santosh Kumar Sinha And 4 Others Respondent :- State Of U.P. And 3 Others Counsel for Petitioner :- Pramod Pathak Counsel for Respondent :- C.S.C.
Hon'ble B. Amit Sthalekar,J. Hon'ble Jayant Banerji,J.
Heard Sri Pramod Pathak, learned counsel for the petitioners and the learned Standing Counsel for respondent nos.1, 2 and 3.
Petitioner no.1 is stated to be a retired employee of the Punjab National Bank Vetan Bhogi Sahkari Rin Samiti Limited, Varanasi, (the Society), petitioner nos.2 and 3 are stated to be employees of the Society, while petitioner nos.4 and 5 are customers of that Society.
The contention of the petitioner is that they had opened their accounts and deposited amounts with the aforesaid Society, which is stated to be registered under the U.P. Co-operative Societies Act, 1965. The prayer made in the writ petition is for a direction to the respondent no.4 to pay the amount deposited by them.
For the writ petition to be maintainable against a private society, the petitioners have to show that respondent no.4 owes a statutory obligation to them, only then they can claim a right to seek a direction to the said respondent for fulfilment of that statutory obligation.
Nothing has been shown in the writ petition as to how respondent no.4-Society is a statutory body. Further more, petitioner nos.4 and 5 are stated to be customers of respondent no.4. It is not understood as to how a private society running a chit fund can be directed to make any payment in writ proceedings. The respondent no.4 is not 'State' within the meaning of Article 12 of the Constitution of India.
The writ petition is, accordingly, dismissed as not maintainable.
Order Date :- 31.7.2018 SK