Conditions of Registration — Members, Qualifications and Liability

The Act does not allow just any group of people to be registered as a co-operative society; certain conditions must first be satisfied, and these are set out mainly in Sections 4 and 6 of the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act, 1960. Section 4 lays down the basic purpose test: a society may be registered only if it has as its object the promotion of the economic interests or the general welfare of its members, or of the public, in accordance with co-operative principles. A body formed for purely commercial profit-making unconnected with co-operative principles cannot be registered as a co-operative society.

The most frequently tested condition is the minimum number of members, laid down in Section 6. For a society of which all the members are individuals, the society must consist of at least ten persons. These ten persons must be qualified to be members (that is, competent to contract and otherwise eligible under Section 22 of the Act), must reside in, or carry on their occupation within, the area of operation of the proposed society, and — an important Maharashtra requirement — each of the ten must ordinarily belong to a different family, so that a society cannot be got up by a single family pretending to be ten separate members. For a federal society, that is, a society whose own members are other co-operative societies, the requirement is different: it must have at least five societies as its members. The Registrar may, for particular classes of societies, require a higher number where the objects and economic viability of the society call for it. …