Every person working for cooperative society will be a public servant as Prevention of corruption Act

Karnataka High Court: Dealing with the issue of whether an employee of a cooperative society falls under the ambit of a 'public servant' as defined in Section 2 of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, the Court held that the said employee will be a public servant if his employer can be construed as an 'authority' for the purposes of Section 2 (c) (iii) of the PC Act, 1988, controlled or aided by the government. In the present case, the petitioner had filed an application for discharge on the ground that he was not a public servant as defined in PC Act, 1988. The employer of the petitioner was a unit of a cooperative society registered under Karnataka Cooperative Societies Act. Taking note of the various clauses of the said Act which expressly provided that the government will have express control over the society and its units, the Court held that every person working for the cooperative society will be a public servant. On the contention raised by the petitioner that an employee who is not a public servant as per the definition provided under IPC, will not be a public servant under the PC Act, the Court opined that the public servant as defined in IPC is different from what is provided for in the PC Act. While the definition given in IPC is very narrow, the ambit of the definition given in PC Act is very wide; accordingly, the two legislations cannot supplement each other. Therefore, the petitioner was held to be a public servant and his revision petition was dismissed. [DR H Narayan v. State of Karnataka, Crl. Rp. No 1395 of 2010, decided on July 31st, 2013]

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