Appointing a statutory auditor for a Maharashtra housing society: bye-law 151 deadlines, and what the Registrar can do if you miss them

Every September, a managing committee somewhere realises the accounts for the year that closed on 31 March are still unaudited, the AGM notice cannot honestly go out without an audit report, and nobody is quite sure who was supposed to appoint the auditor. The bye-laws answer that with more precision than most committees expect — who appoints, by when, and what the Registrar can do if the society does neither.

Who appoints, and from where

Bye-law 151(a) is unambiguous: the Society appoints its Statutory Auditor in its General Body Meeting, and only from the panel of Auditors approved by the State Government — the Committee cannot make this appointment on its own authority. The same bye-law caps tenure: the same Statutory Auditor shall not be appointed for more than two consecutive years — a rotation requirement, not a suggestion.

Bye-law 95(f) places this appointment on the fixed agenda of the Annual General Body Meeting itself: "to appoint an Auditor, for the Audit, from the panel approved by State Government" is listed among the business every AGM must transact. Bye-law 151(c) gives the same meeting the power to fix the auditor's remuneration — the Committee does not decide what the auditor is paid.

A society may, in addition, appoint an internal auditor — but only "if it considers it necessary," and that appointment too is made at the Annual General Body Meeting (bye-law 151(d)). Internal audit is optional under the bye-laws; statutory audit is not.

By when

Bye-law 151(b) fixes the deadline in two overlapping ways: the Committee must get the accounts audited within six months of the closure of the financial year, and in any case before the notice of the Annual General Body Meeting is issued. Since bye-law 94(a) requires the AGM itself to be held on or before 30 September each year — with no provision for extension — the audit has to be finished well before that date, not merely started.

Bye-law 146(b) adds a filing deadline on top of the audit deadline: the Society must file its Annual Returns with the Registrar on or before 30th September, and those returns must include the Society's Audited Statement of Accounts (bye-law 146(b)(ii)). A further, separate clause requires the society to file a return naming the Auditor or Auditing Firm appointed at the AGM, together with the auditor's written consent, within one month of the date of the AGM (bye-law 146(b)(viii)).

What happens if nobody does

The bye-laws do not leave this open. Two distinct default mechanisms apply, aimed at two different failures:

• •If the Society fails to intimate and file the Returns required under section 75(2A) and section 79(1B) of the Act — which includes the audited accounts and the auditor's name — the Registrar may cause the Society's accounts to be audited by appointing an Auditor from the panel of Auditors himself (bye-law 146(b)(ix)). The society loses the choice it would otherwise have had at its own AGM.
• •If the Committee fails to hold the AGM by the bye-law 94(a) deadline, that default — bye-law 94(b) refers to it as default in calling the AGM "as stipulated in bye-law 93(a) above", which is a slip in the English text: bye-law 93 has no sub-clause (a) and deals with the Provisional Committee handing over charge, and the Marathi text of 94(ब) reads "उपविधी क्र. 94 (अ)". Read it as the bye-law 94(a) deadline — "shall attract disqualification and action as provided under section 75(5) of the Act" (bye-law 94(b)) — which, since the audit report has to be placed before that same AGM under bye-law 95(c), means a missed AGM stalls the entire audit-and-report cycle, not just the election of the committee.

There is a third failure the bye-laws also address directly: once the audit report arrives, the Committee must act on it. Bye-law 153(a) requires the Secretary to prepare a draft Audit Rectification Report in Form 'O' (prescribed under Rule 73 of the MCS Rules, 1961) responding to the objections and suggestions in the audit report, place it before the Committee meeting held next after receipt, and complete the rectification within three months of the date of the audit report — after which it goes to both the Registrar and the AGM. If the Committee fails to submit the Audit Rectification Report to the Registrar and the Annual General Body Meeting, bye-law 153(b) states the consequence bluntly: every Member of the Committee shall be deemed to have committed an offence under section 146 of the Act and shall be liable for penalty under section 147. This is the one point in the audit cycle where the bye-laws name an offence and a penalty section directly, rather than leaving it to inference.

Throughout the audit, bye-law 152 requires the Secretary to produce all the society's books, registers and records before both auditors, and to furnish whatever information they require. Bye-law 141(7) requires the society to maintain a separate Audit Rectification Register in Form 'O'.

The 2026 amendment rules replace the general Rules 53 and 53C of the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Rules, 1961 — which used to govern audit generally — with the bye-law framework described above for housing societies. A committee checking audit procedure after 18 June 2026 should work from the bye-laws above, not the old general rules.

What your committee should do

1. 1Calendar the six-month audit deadline from the close of the financial year (31 March), not from the AGM date — bye-law 151(b) ties it to both, and the earlier of the two controls.
2. 2Put the auditor's appointment and remuneration on the AGM agenda every year, drawn from the State-approved panel, and check the outgoing auditor's tenure before reappointing — two consecutive years is the ceiling under bye-law 151(a).
3. 3File the Annual Return, including the audited accounts, by 30 September, and file the separate return naming the auditor with the written consent within one month of the AGM (bye-law 146(b)(ii), (viii)).
4. 4Treat the Audit Rectification Report as a three-month deadline, not a filing formality — bye-law 153(a) starts the three-month clock on the date of the audit report, and bye-law 153(b) attaches a penal consequence to the separate failure to submit that report to the Registrar and to the Annual General Body Meeting.
5. 5Give the auditor everything asked for, promptly, under bye-law 152 — a Secretary who withholds records does not stop the audit; it only delays the Committee's own three-month rectification clock.

Where the bye-laws are silent

The bye-laws do not say what happens if the general body itself fails to appoint any auditor at all — as distinct from failing to file the return about one. The closest provision, bye-law 146(b)(ix), is triggered by a failure to file returns, not, in terms, by a failure to appoint. In practice a society that never appoints an auditor will also fail to file the audited-accounts return, so the Registrar's default power is likely to bite regardless — but that is an inference, not something the bye-laws state directly, and this article goes no further than what they say.