HIDE DOCUMENTS FROM A MEMBER, LOSE YOUR COMMITTEE SEAT

The Bombay High Court has handed society members a decisive win: withhold documents, lose your committee seat. On July 4, the court upheld the disqualification of a cooperative housing society's managing committee members for deliberately failing to furnish documents sought by another member within the time prescribed under the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act, 1960. The provision at the heart of the case is one most committees treat as a formality: a member's statutory right to obtain copies of the society's records. The Act prescribes a time limit for compliance. The committee in question let the clock run out — and the court found the failure was not oversight but deliberate. Justice Sandeep V. Marne's bench accepted that substantial compliance may excuse minor lapses in some circumstances, but held that a deliberate refusal to supply documents within the statutory period attracts the disqualification consequence the Act provides. The practical translation is stark. Until now, a member asking for the balance sheet, the development agreement, the tender comparison, or the minutes of the meeting that selected a contractor could be met with the oldest tactics in society governance: 'the file is with the auditor', 'come next month', 'the secretary is travelling'. Each of those answers, if it carries the request past the statutory deadline and the delay is found deliberate, is now a route out of office. The timing gives the ruling added weight. Read with the MCS Amendment Rules 2026 (editorial, Page 7), it shifts real power toward the ordinary member: the amended rules make the redevelopment meeting transparent, and this ruling makes the paper trail leading to it accessible. For members, method matters — a written, dated, acknowledged application starts a clock the committee ignores at its peril.

मुंबई उच्च न्यायालयाचा ४ जुलैचा निर्णय; कायदेशीर मुदतीत कागदपत्रे न देणे जाणीवपूर्वक ठरल्यास व्यवस्थापन समिती सदस्य अपात्र — सहकार कायद्यातील पारदर्शकतेला बळ. सभासदाने मागितलेली कागदपत्रे कायद्याने ठरवून दिलेल्या मुदतीत जाणीवपूर्वक न देणाऱ्या व्यवस्थापन समिती सदस्यांची अपात्रता मुंबई उच्च न्यायालयाने कायम ठेवली. 'फाईल ऑडिटरकडे आहे', 'पुढच्या महिन्यात या' — ही नेहमीची उत्तरे आता थेट पद गमावण्यास कारणीभूत ठरू शकतात. विकास करारनामा, निविदा तुलनापत्रक, ठेकेदार निवडीचे इतिवृत्त — या साऱ्या कागदपत्रांवर सभासदाचा कायदेशीर हक्क आहे. नव्या एमसीएस नियमांनी पुनर्विकासाची सभा पारदर्शक केली; या निर्णयाने सभेपर्यंत नेणारा कागदोपत्री मार्गही सभासदांसाठी खुला केला. या निर्णयात लेखी, तारीखवार मागणी व तिची पोच हाच निर्णायक पुरावा ठरला. कायदेशीर मुदतीत कागदपत्रे देणे हे समितीचे वैधानिक कर्तव्य असून, जाणीवपूर्वक विलंब झाल्यास पद गमावण्याचा परिणाम कायद्यानेच जोडलेला आहे — हेच या निकालाचे सार आहे.