In Brief
The Supreme Court held that the High Court cannot extend the statutory period for preferring an election petition under Section 69(3) of the Kerala Cooperative Societies Act, 1969, absent express statutory authority. When the electoral officer misconstrued Section 16A(1)(b) to exclude 583 members from the voters list (reducing eligibility from 611 to 28 members), the High Court should have reconsidered the writ petitions on merits rather than relegating parties to the statutory election dispute mechanism with an enlarged timeline. The Court remitted the writ petitions to the High Court for fresh consideration, emphasizing that strict temporal limits in election law cannot be circumvented by writ courts.
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