Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath allocated portfolios to his cabinet colleagues on Wednesday and allocated Mukut Bihari Verma the cooperative department in the state. Knowledgeable sources say a major overhaul of the co-operative sector is on the cards.
Majority of cooperative organizations of the state are being controlled by the families of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav. Be it Pradeshik Cooperative Federations or District Central Cooperative Banks, majority of posts have been grabbed by Yadav clan or their protégés.
Recently, in a clever move Ship Pal got the elections of PCF pre-poned and got his son Aditya Yadav elected for the next term. His term was to end in 2018 but Shiv Pal was unsure of his clan’s political future in the wake of the upcoming Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.
BJP had accused Shiv Pal Singh Yadav, father of Aditya Yadav of practising extreme political opportunism for
pre-dating an election that was to take place in 2018 in its usual course.
But the senior Yadav concerned about the future of his son wanted to ensure the latter’s rein continued as PCF chairman for five years till 2021.
Shivpal’s wife is also Chairman of a cooperative bank in the state. Opposition parties have maintained that cooperative bodies in the state are being cynically controlled by the Yadav clan giving the thumbs down to the idea of democracy in cooperatives.
Cooperators in the know of things hope that the BJP MLA from Kaiserganj Mukut Bihari who defeated his nearest BSP rival Khalid Khan by more than 25,000 votes and now has been sworn in as the Cooperation Minister would clear the mess in the cooperative sector.
Aditynath had earlier in the day submitted a list of ministers with their respective portfolios to governor Ram Naik at Raj Bhawan in Lucknow. It was evident from the list that most of the crucial portfolios are yet to be allocated.
While Deputy CM and UP BJP Chief Keshav Prasad Maurya was given the charge of PWD ministry, Dinesh Sharma the second Deputy CM received the charge of ministry responsible for secondary and higher education.
