The Cooperation Ministry has incorporated the feedback received from various sources including that from the apex co-op body NCUI, in the draft amendments to the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act, 2002. The Bill is currently in PMO and the chance of it being introduced in the Parliament looks bleak due to frequent disruption of Houses.
Informed sources confide that the Ministry has more or less agreed on all the points voiced by co-operators and the only bone of contention remains the issue of custody of Cooperative Education Fund (CEF). The govt has even agreed on the NCUI demand regarding return of share on book value vs face value issue. But there is no common ground yet on the issue of CEF.
While NCUI feels the custody of CEF should be with NCUI; the draft talks of govt control over the fund. Recently, NCUI issued a press release arguing the benefits of CEF custody with the NCUI. The release quoted NCUI President, Dileep Sanghani as saying “the existing provision in the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act, 2002 through which NCUI has the authority to collect and manage the Cooperative Education Fund must remain unchanged.”
Elaborating, Sanghani said maintenance of the Cooperative Education Fund by the Government will give a signal that the government wants to control the fund, in which it has no contribution, which is against the principles of autonomous cooperatives. He said this will be against ICA’s 4th Principle of Cooperatives which is “Autonomy and Independence”.
A senior Ministry official, on condition of anonymity, said that there would be no change in the NCUI control over the fund. The NCUI President would be the Chairman, as in the past and the fund would be utilized for NCUI’s training and education purposes only. The Committee headed by the NCUI President would decide on the allocation so where is the difference, he asked.
Elaborating further, the official said that there would be better compliance from the profit-making co-operatives if the government has the control and monitoring of the Fund. This will ultimately benefit NCUI only, he said. Without mentioning any names, the officials said that several profit-making co-ops do not always donate one percent of their profit to NCUI, as dictated by the Act so far. But once the Ministry becomes the custodian of the same, incidents of flouting the rule will dwindle for sure, he underlined.
On the other hand, NCUI, which is a representative body, feels that the management of the Education Fund by the Central Government will marginalize the importance of NCUI which is an umbrella organization of the cooperative movement. There is also a feeling that under the present arrangement, the government may come up with more stringent utilization measures of the fund, or have few more nominees in the present committee of the Fund, the NCUI release read.
Further, it is apprehended that if the Central Government takes control of this fund, then at the state level also respective state governments may take control of such funds in their fold, which may affect the activities of education and training at the state level.
The members felt that in accordance with cooperative principles, the government should decentralize the rights of cooperatives instead of controlling them, concluded the release.