In a rare show of solidarity Mr Chandra Pal Singh Yadav, President of NCUI has decided to quit the race in favour of Iffco candidate Shri K Srinivasa Gowda in run up to the mid-term election to ICA Board.
Election to the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) Board is to take place on the occasion of General Assembly slated on 14-18 November 2011 in Cancun. Talking to Indiancooperative.com from Jhansi, Mr Yadav said “I talked to various cooperative leaders in the country and everybody felt that we need to present united voice of Indian cooperatives at international level.
Cooperative leaders from IFFCO, Nafed, Nccf, Urban Cooperative banks, labour, fisheries were consulted and it was decided that I should sit in favour of Iffco nominee Mr Gowda”. Anyway, this is a mid-term election and once we offered late Surendra Jakhar the ICA board membership we decided to let his nominee continue.
To a question if he would fight in regular election, Mr Yadav said that it is too early to say as elections are two years away from now.
But I seriously believe that NCUI is the sole representative of Indian cooperative movement as it encompasses whole range of cooperative movements. Iffco represents only fertilizer, Amul represents only dairy so on and so forth; but NCUI represents the whole gamut of cooperative movements in the country, he added.
When Indiancooperative.com contacted Dr G N Saxena, Cooperative Director of IFFCO to take his reaction on this development, he thanked NCUI President for this gesture. “Dr Yadav is a cooperative leader and if he has withdrawn his candidature in favour of Iffco nominee in the spirit of cooperative solidarity, we are grateful to him”, he said.
Vacancies for two board members are there-one from India and second from Poland. There are twenty members on the board of ICA including President. Any country, no matter how big, can have just one member on the Board. There is varying number of delegates to General Assembly but in no case would it be more than 25 from a country. India has 12 delegates in General Assembly.
Indiancooperative.com wrote in earlier pieces that for a country like India which is at the helm of global cooperative movement, efforts should be made to have consensus candidate.
Talking to Indiacooperative.com, even ICA Asia-Pacific Regional Director Dr Chan Ho Choi had said that country matters not the individual.
ICA is an independent, non-governmental association which unites, represents and serves co-operatives worldwide. Founded in 1895, ICA has 254 member organisations from 94 countries active in all sectors of the economy. Together these co-operatives represent nearly one billion individuals worldwide.
