In a major victory for the apex body NCUI, Delhi High Court has asked the Union of India to restrain itself from taking any steps to make structural changes in the organization. The case related to the NCCT delink from NCUI and came up for hearing last week.
The High Court also observed that prime facie it appears that the respondents (Union Govt) have no authority to delink a part (NCCT) of the petitioners’(NCUI’s) organization as a separate society.
To repeat the words of the Order “After some arguments, it appears prime facie that the respondents have no authority to insist on hiving off part of the petitioners’ organization as a separate society.”
The court asked the Union of India to tell it the provisions of law, under which the impugned orders have been passed. The Union Govt has been asked to file an affidavit to this effect.
The order read” The learned counsel appearing for the respondent is directed to file an affidavit clearly indicating the provisions of law, under which the impugned orders have been passed for expropriating a part of the petitioner’s organization. Let an affidavit be filed within a period of two weeks, from today.”
The matter has been posted for the next hearing on 8th May, 2019. The current Order was passed in the court of Hon’ble Justice Vibhu Bakhru on 5.04.2019
It bears recall that National Cooperative Union of India is the Petitioner in the case.
While a battery of lawyers including Harish Malhotra, Senior Advocate, Mr Om Prakash and others represented NCUI’s points of argument in the High Court, the respondents- the Union of India & ANR were represented through Arun Bhardwaj, CGSC with Nikhil Bhardwaj and others.
It bears recall that NCUI had received a letter from the Agriculture Ministry with the title “Establishing National Council of Cooperative Training (NCCT) as an independent, Central and Professional entity-delinking from National Cooperative Union of India”.
The apex body went to court challenging the order of the Ministry. It was after several adjournments that this order was delivered by the High Court.
The next hearing scheduled for May 8 would be interesting to watch as, according to some of the experts of co-op laws, Ministry would be hard-pressed to quote relevant laws justifying its delinking order.
Also read: DNA Analysis: Will Ministry’s stand on NCCT crash-land in court? https://www.indiancooperative.com/ncui/dna-analysis-will-ministrys-ncct-crash-land-court/