Bombay HC: Deputy Registrar can't issue NOCs for change of flat use, only the Cooperative Court can

A cooperative housing society challenged a 'No Objection Certificate' that the Deputy Registrar of Co-operative Societies, Mumbai, had issued permitting a member to use a ground-floor residential flat for commercial purposes, which the Divisional Joint Registrar had confirmed in revision. The society contended that neither the Deputy Registrar nor the revisional authority had any power under the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act, 1960 (MCS Act) to authorise a change in the permitted use of a flat. The Bombay High Court agreed.

It held that a dispute over whether a society may validly refuse to permit commercial use of a residential flat is a dispute between a society and its member, touching the society's business, and such disputes fall squarely for adjudication by the Cooperative Court under Section 91 of the MCS Act, following a reference under Section 23(2) or otherwise — not before the Deputy Registrar, who has no jurisdiction either to issue an NOC himself or to direct the society to issue one for a change of user. The NOC and the confirming revisional order were accordingly without jurisdiction and unsustainable. The Court set aside both, allowed the writ petition, and left the flat's current occupants free to pursue their claim for an NOC through a proper dispute under Section 91, to be decided on its own merits uninfluenced by its observations.