Registered Society

Registration of a society (other than a cooperative society or a company) is governed by the Societies Registration Act 1860, a central statute — though a number of states (including West Bengal, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh) have enacted their own registration acts or state-specific amendments, so the exact procedural requirements depend on the state of registration. Under the central Act, Section 1 requires at least seven persons (or, where the subscribers are themselves societies, seven or more registered societies) to subscribe their names to a Memorandum of Association stating the society's name, its objects, and the names, addresses and occupations of the members of the first governing body. The Memorandum, together with a copy of the Rules and Regulations governing the society, is filed with the Registrar of Societies of the relevant state along with the prescribed fee. Registration under Section 3 confers the society with a distinct legal identity capable of holding property and suing or being sued in its own name under Section 6, though the liability protection available to members is narrower than that of a Section 8 company.

Registered society services cover the formation and the compliance of a society registered under the Societies Registration Act 1860 — the memorandum of association and the rules and the regulations, the registration with the Registrar of Societies, the governing body and the members, and the ongoing compliance of the meetings, the accounts and the filings. The society is the structure of the not-for-profit organisations — the clubs, the associations, the charitable and the educational institutions — and its registration under the Act is what makes the collective a legal entity.

The society is the classic form of the Indian not-for-profit — the members joined by the common object, the governing body elected to manage, and the legal identity conferred by the registration under the Societies Registration Act 1860. The registration gives the society the capacity to hold the property, enter the contracts and sue and be sued, and the compliance — the meetings, the accounts, the returns — is what keeps the society alive and its tax registrations under the Income-tax Act 1961 valid.

The cost of a broken society is the legal and the tax exposure: the society that never registered and the members who held the liabilities, the registrations that lapsed and the exemptions lost, the governing body disputes that the rules never resolved.

This service is for groups and organisations forming and running societies. We draft the memorandum and the rules under the Societies Registration Act 1860, register the society with the Registrar, set up the governing body and the members' records, and manage the compliance — the meetings, the accounts, the annual filings — so the society operates within its registration and keeps its tax exemptions under the Act.