The membership of the Council shall consist of the following categories:
1 Regular Members
These shall include registered societies whose membership is mostly and primarily of Indian origin or Indian ancestry. These shall be non-profit societies and be in good standing per Societies Act of Alberta. The society shall promote the objectives of the Council and shall abide by all the by-laws of the Council. The Society must have a membership of not less than 50 paid-up individual members. For purpose of clarity and abbreviation the member societies may be termed ‘regular members’ or a ‘member’ or a ‘member society’.
Each member society having a paid-up and voting membership of up to one hundred (100) shall nominate two (2) ‘delegates’ to the Council, one of who should be an executive of the society. Member societies having membership exceeding one hundred (100) paid-up individual members may nominate one additional ‘delegate’ to the Council. The delegates duly nominated by the member society shall be the spoke-person for the respective member society and shall represent the member society to the Council. These representatives of the member societies herein after referred as ‘delegates’ or ‘delegate’. The Council of India Societies of Edmonton
2 Ex-officio delegates
The immediate past-president of the Council will be an ‘ex-officio delegate’ of the Council. Similarly, all elected members of the ‘executive committee’ per section 7.0 will be ex-officio ‘delegates’ of the Council for the operational year for which they have been elected. The ex-officio delegates shall have the same privileges and responsibilities as ‘delegates’ and have similar right to ‘vote’. An elected executive - who is thus also an ex-officio delegate - may or may not represent the member society as a delegate. In the later case, the concerned member society may nominate another delegate in place of the elected executive.
3 Associate Members (General Body of the Council)
The ‘General Body’ of the Council shall consist of
- The ‘delegates’ nominated by the member societies
- ‘ex-officio delegates’ as elected to the Executive
- ‘ex-officio delegate’ as immediate past-president.
The ‘General Body’ shall be the policy making body of the Council. The deliberations of the General Body shall be by consensus. In the absence of a consensus, a majority vote will prevail – except indicated otherwise in these bylaws.