NCCF emerges from shadow; Young Turks-Vishal & Yashpal take charge

At long last the apex body of consumer co-ops in the country, NCCF went through the electoral process and elected Vishal Singh and Yashpal unopposed as Chairman and Vice Chairman of the body respectively. South Delhi District Magistrate Monica Priyadarshni was the returning officer.

Among the ten board seats of NCCF, elections were held for five at the NCUI headquarters in Delhi on Wednesday. The unopposed winners are: Northern Zone–Nafed Chairman Bijendra Singh, Southern Zone– Shivalingappa K.G., Central Zone– Yashpal Singh Yadav and Eastern Zone– Vishal Singh.

There was, however, voting for Western Zone, where Kribhco Director Pareshbhai Patel and NCCF former Chairman Virendra Singh fought each other. Patel trounced Singh by gaining 36 votes. Virendra Singh received only 11 votes. The total eligible voters in the elections were 60 out of which 47 cast their votes.

There was a deluge of greetings for the candidates as soon as the news of winners’ victory were announced. Forgetting past differences with Vishal Singh, Biscomuan Chairman Sunil Singh extended his greetings to Vishal on behalf of Biscomaun.

The newly elected Chairman Vishal Singh is the son of veteran cooperator Late Ajit Singh and the grandson of the famous Tapeshwar Singh. Ever since his father’s demise, Vishal has been trying to come up on his own. Though he is on the Board of both NCUI and Nafed, he was yet to become Chairman of any national level co-op. Bijender Singh, a committed friend of his father, is said to have helped him gain this position.

Yashpal, the newly elected Vice Chairman of NCCF needs no introduction. Son of Kribhco Chairman Chandra Pal Singh Yadav, Yashpal had also contested Assembly elections in UP.

It bears recall that the NCCF board comprises 10 elected directors out of which five directors come from state cooperative consumer/marketing federations and five are elected from primary consumer co-ops at the district level.No candidates were there from the state Marketing/Consumer federation category, as they are not eligible to contest the elections according to NCCF byelaws.

In the elections, for the remaining five seats (District level consumer co-ops), six candidates filed their nomination papers on the last date. The five seats of this category are divided into five Zones i.e. Northern, Southern, Central, Eastern and Western Zone. Out of five seats, four candidates won unopposed, including Vishal and Yashpal.

On this occasion of the NCCF elections, NCUI Chairman Dileep Sanghani and many other cooperators were also present. The elections of NCCF were held on the instructions given to the interim board for conducting the election by the Delhi High Court in June, this year.

Earlier, the NCCF elections were scheduled for 3rd September 2022 but later they were postponed to 28th September 2022, due to delay in completing the elections process.

Mired in court cases and later in controversies over the validity of membership of some board members, NCCF was not even able to hold its AGM properly for many years. That it could finally emerge from the shadow of problems and have an elected board is good news for the consumer cooperative movement.

Readers would recall that the last elections of the NCCF were held in 2015 but in the wake of some irregularities in the elections, the matter went to the Delhi High Court. It was resolved in a few months. Later, in 2018 due to some dispute with the government related to membership issues, the High Court in 2018 appointed the interim board under the chairmanship of Hon’ble Justice (Retd.) Indermeet Kaur Kochhar.

The NCCF has a business mix of more than Rs 2300 crore and earned a net profit of Rs 23.58 crore. Across India, NCCF has 24 branches and 152 societies are its members.