A panel of Juries comprising of distinguished cooperative leaders and agricultural ministry officials sat through the Wednesday to sort eight winners out of more than 400 entries piled up since the ministry announced co-op awards coinciding with the birthday of Laxmanrao Inamdar.
If the Ministry Panel comprised of Additional Secretary Upama Srivastava and Central Registrar Ashish Bhutani, Satish Marathe, N Satyanarayan represented the cooperative sector. NCDC’s D N Thakur-the convener of the show was also part of the panel.
There were around 375 entries from Primary cooperative societies which included urban co-op banks, PACS, credit-co-ops and others at the basic level. Also, there were 58 entries from district level and about 35 from state level.
Though the members of the jury were incommunicado citing the oath of secrecy in such matters, Indian Cooperative has gathered that six primary co-op societies have finally made it to the list. One from distrct level and another from state level have also been selected. In all, eight co-operatives from across the nation have been chosen.
These awards would be given at Vigyan Bhawan- may by the Prime Minister if he is able to participate, said a source. The final confirmation about his participation from the PMO is yet to come. It bears recall that Narendra Modi treated late Inamdar as his Guru- in matters both political and social.
Earlier, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh had announced that a national award would be instituted in the name of RSS leader late Laxmanrao Inamdar to acknowledge contributions and public services rendered by cooperatives in the country.
On Inamdar’s birth day every year Singh had said the national cooperative award will be given to a primary agriculture cooperative society in every state, to the best district cooperative bank of five states and the state cooperative bank, while speaking in a function at the NDMC Auditorium in Delhi to celebrate the centenary celebrations of Inamdar last year.
Late Laxmanrao Ji stood for dedicated leadership in the cooperative sector and this award is aimed to promote this, Singh had said.
