Membership and Expulsion in a Registered Society: Rules and Remedies

Membership is where a society's constitutional law becomes personal. Who gets in is the association's own choice, protected by the freedom of association; who is thrown out engages the contract every member holds and the fairness courts require of domestic bodies. The two questions obey different rules, and most societies litigation begins by confusing them.

1. Admission: the association chooses

• Admission is governed entirely by the rules: classes of members, qualifications, the admitting organ, fees and forms. Section 15 then defines who counts as a member for the Act.
• No right to be admitted. A voluntary association may choose its members, and an applicant refused admission has ordinarily no remedy; the right to form an association includes deciding who shall be part of it.
• Statutory inroads exist where a statute makes membership a gateway, professional bodies, co-operatives under some State laws, sports bodies subject to federation norms; there, refusal may be tested against the statute.
• Mass admissions before elections are the classic abuse; the cures are record-date rules, admission registers kept contemporaneously and, in dispute, scrutiny of who had power to admit and whether fees actually moved.

Figure 1: A membership from entry to exit

2. Expulsion: the contract and its discipline

• Source of the power. Expulsion exists only if the rules confer it; without a rule, membership continues until resignation or dissolution, and purported removals are void.
• T.P. Daver v. Lodge Victoria, AIR 1963 SC 1144 supplies the discipline: the body must act strictly by its rules, honestly and in good faith; the member may be expelled only in the manner the rules provide; and natural justice, notice of the charge and a fair opportunity to answer, is applied broadly, not with a court's formality.
• Limited review. The civil court is not an appellate forum: it tests jurisdiction, procedure, good faith and fair hearing, never the merits of the society's judgment on its member.
• Common defects that sink expulsions: charges never framed, the wrong organ deciding, no notice of the meeting, pre-judged outcomes recorded in advance, and expulsions aimed at silencing a faction before an election.

Figure 2: The three questions every expulsion must survive

3. The expelled member's remedies

Figure 3: The two gates, compared

• Civil suit for a declaration that the expulsion is void and an injunction restraining exclusion from membership rights; damages where loss is proved.
• Interim protection is often decisive: courts restrain societies from holding elections or disposing of property while a contested expulsion is examined.
• Internal appeals the rules provide must usually be exhausted or shown futile; Daver itself turned partly on the member's conduct of his internal appeal.
• The prescribed authority or Registrar has a role only where State law gives one; expulsion as such is a matter for the civil court in most States.
• A member expelled in breach of the rules remains, in law, a member throughout; votes taken and offices filled in his wrongful absence inherit the infirmity, which is why societies should suspend contested processes until the challenge is resolved.

4. Quick Revision

1. Find the admission and expulsion rules before advising anyone.
2. Treat an applicant and a member as differently as the law does.
3. Frame charges, give notice, hear, decide honestly, record.
4. Challenge defects promptly; delay forfeits interim relief.
5. Keep elections off until expulsion disputes are decided.

5. Frequently Asked Questions

Can a society suspend a member pending inquiry?

Only if the rules allow it, expressly or by necessary implication, and even then the suspension must be a genuine interim measure: short, reviewed, and confined to what the inquiry requires. A suspension that runs for years, or strips the member of rights the inquiry does not touch, is expulsion by another name and is tested as one. Where the rules are silent, the safer course for the society is speed, complete the inquiry quickly, rather than improvised interim penalties, which courts view as the governing body exceeding the jurisdiction the rules confer.

Does an expelled member lose rights in society property?

A member as such has no property interest to lose: society property is held for its purposes, and section 14 denies members the surplus even at dissolution, so expulsion forfeits participation, the vote, office, facilities, not a share of assets. What an expelled member keeps are accrued personal claims, a refundable deposit the rules promise, salary for services actually rendered under a contract, and the right to recover anything of his own the society holds. Conversely his debts to the society survive: arrears accrued before expulsion remain recoverable under section 10.

What should rules provide to make discipline workable?

Five clauses do most of the work: defined grounds for action, stated with enough particularity that charges can be framed under them; a designated inquiring organ and a separate deciding organ where the society's size permits; a procedure fixing notice periods, the member's right to answer in writing and appear, and the vote required to expel; an internal appeal with its own time limit; and an interim-measures clause confined to genuine emergencies. Societies that adopt such rules in calm times rarely lose expulsion litigation, because the court's whole review is of compliance with exactly these provisions.

6. Related Topics and Provisions

• Member and governing body: sections 15 and 16
• Rules and regulations of a society
• Meetings and elections in societies
• Internal disputes and the civil court
• Freedom of association under Article 19(1)(c)
• Members liable as strangers: sections 9 to 11