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Sardar Bahginder Singh v. Sardar Manjieeth Singh Jagan Singh and Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2020 INSC 501Decided 20 Aug 2020
Civil Appeal No. 2964 of 2020
Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud · Justice K.M. Joseph

Background

The Nanded Sikh Gurudwara Sachkhand Shri Hazur Apchalnagar Sahib is governed by a statutory Board under a 1956 state law, with four of its members required to be nominated by a separate registered body/trust called the Sachkhand Hazuri Khalsa Diwan, Nanded. Rival factions within the Diwan, each claiming to be its legitimate President, sent conflicting letters nominating different sets of four people to the State Government, which then controversially picked members from the competing lists itself and issued a notification. The Bombay High Court (Aurangabad bench) quashed that notification, holding the government had no authority to pick and choose among rival claims, only the Diwan itself could validly make the nomination, and the affected nominees appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court agreed with the High Court that the power to nominate four Board members under Section 6(1)(viii) of the 1956 Act belongs exclusively to the Diwan, meaning its entire collective body of voting members, not any individual office-bearer or faction claiming the presidency, and that the State Government had wrongly "usurped" this power by selecting names itself from competing claims. The Court directed that two pending inquiry applications before the Assistant Charity Commissioner (about who are the Diwan's true office-bearers) be resolved within three months, and that a fresh, proper nomination process be conducted by the Diwan's full membership within the same period, with the Charity Commissioner acting as an observer. It declined to let the already-notified (invalid) members continue even temporarily, and dismissed the appeals, affirming the High Court.

Lesson Learnt

A statutory body's power to nominate representatives to a public institution's governing board must be exercised by the properly constituted collective body itself (here, the full membership of the trust), not appropriated by individual office-bearers or by a government caught between rival factional claims: internal leadership disputes within a trust must be resolved through the trust's own proper inquiry process, not bypassed by executive action.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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