Shamalbhai Patel and Valamji R Humbal have been elected unopposed as the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of Gujarat Milk Marketing Cooperative Federation (GCMMF) which sells its products under the brand name of Amul. The election was held on Thursday at its headquarters located in Anand.
Patel and Humbal replaced Ramsinh Parmar and Jetha Bharwad respectively. A member of GCMMF’s milk union, Patel represents Sabarkantha District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union Limited (Sabar Dairy) and Humbal is Chairman of Kutch District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union Limited.
The newly elected Chairman and Vice-Chairman belong to the BJP, as do almost all the Directors in the GCMMF Board. It is being reported that Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and Union Home Minister Amit Shah took special interest in the election of GCMMF and the stamp on their name was put in a state BJP party meeting held recently. This led to a smooth transition of power, quipped an old BJP hand.
It bears recall that the election for GCMMF was held in January 2018 for five years. The bye-laws of GCMMF mandates that the Chairman and Vice-Chairman would be rotated midterm that is after 2.5 years. That is how Chairman, Ramsinh Parmar and vice-chairman Jetha Bharwad paved way for the new team. The new team was announced by the BJP leader I K Jadeja, to which everyone agreed without any hesitation.
The newly elected Chairman’s phone was picked up by his nephew when Indian Cooperative called him. Somehow due to disturbance in the tele signals we could not talk to him but his deputy and the newly elected Vice Chairman Humbal said, “It’s a big responsibility on our shoulders given the expectation people have from GCMMF”.
Humbal who also sounded equally humble said “We will use this opportunity to help our dairy farmers as we intend to see how can we increase the rate given to them”.
“I belong to Kutch Dairy which is having India’s first Camel Milk Processing plant in Bhuj. I have been working for the upliftment of farmers and have been associated with the cooperative movement for the past thirty years”, said Humbal stressing that the new assignment has also brought new challenges before him.
Being a BJP District general secretary Humbal has been connected with several co-ops of Kutch.
It is worth knowing that GCMMF follows a unique election pattern. Theoretically, heads of each milk union of Gujarat, which are member unions of GCMMF, elect their chairman. A total of 18 milk unions of Gujarat are member unions of the federation.
