NAFED’s Annual General Meeting at NUCI Auditorium in Delhi on Friday missed a stormy session by a whisker as delegates were prepared to voice their protest on the issue of share capital.
In a rarest of the rare cases delegates participating in the meeting forced the withdrawal of Agenda number-3.
Agenda number-3 was related to raising the share-capital price from Rs 40,000 to one lakh.
In an interview given to Indian Cooperative earlier, NAFED Chairman Bijender Singh had warned of disqualification in case of non-payment of the enhanced rate. Many of the delegates had also come, though reluctantly with a bank draft of Rs 60,000.
But the popular mood was against putting money in a sinking boat.
Indian Cooperative has learnt that there were backroom discussions between Nafed Chairman Bijender Singh and NCUI President Chandra Pal Singh Yadav in which the latter gave former an idea of restive mood of participants. Many of the directors also impressed upon the Nafed Chairman to understand the rebellious mood of delegates.
Some of the participants were prepared to raise their voice against the hike which might have led to an uncalled for situation. In a swift move the agenda was dropped before its turn came leading to wide applauds from the delegates.
Ram Kalebar Singh from Samastipur, Bihar who had raised the issue was quick to grab the mike and thanked the Chairman of staving off a storm.
Justifying their demand one of the delegates told Indian Cooperative that NAFED has not given us any dividend for a number of years. We have demanded to apply the new rate for new comers prospectively not retrospectively.
Speaking on the occasion Nafed Chairman Bijender Singh informed the delegates of steps taken by the Federation to recover the losses suffered by the agri-cooperative in tie-up business. The losses have accrued upto Rs 2000 crores, he informed.
Nafed has requested the government to give a bank guarantee of Rs 1200 crore to take care of the old loans and an amount of Rs 920 crores interest free loan for nine years, he added.
Bijender Singh also said that Nafed is taking all moves to recover the lost money with the help of investigating agencies including CBI. He promised to put Nafed back on the track with the help of governmental support.
