Grievances of few members cannot trigger society audit: Bombay HC

The Bombay High Court has ruled that complaints from a handful of society members cannot be used to initiate a financial inquiry against a housing society. The court quashed a deputy registrar's September 2025 order that had directed an inquiry into the accounts of Kurla Kamgar Cooperative Housing Society (KKCHS) in Mumbai.

A division bench of Justices Bharati Dangre and Ashish Chavan observed that Section 83 of the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies (MCS) Act, 1960, permits an inquiry only if the registrar acts suo motu or receives a complaint from at least one-fifth of the society's members. In this case, the registrar cited complaints from two members as source material for a suo motu inquiry.

"By no stretch of imagination does the provision make it permissible to take cognizance of the complaint and then treat it as a 'suo motu exercise'," the judges said. They added that the law requires majority public opinion to trigger such a probe, not just one or two members with an axe to grind. The petition challenging the order was filed by Vaishali Manjrekar and seven others.