Decimating the Congress bastion from housing cooperative federation at the national level, Bihar’s rising star Vijay Singh was declared elected as the Chairman of National Housing Federation of India, replacing the outgoing Chairman Satyanaryana Sharma, Congress MLA in the election held on Thursday at the federation’s headquarters in New Delhi.
Singh who belongs to BJP is the Chairman of Bihar State Housing Cooperative Federation. The two Vice-Chairmen elected with him are Mudit Verma and Vadilal B Patel. Verma who is a Sahakar Bharati member, is also on the board of apex co-op body NCUI.
The fight was between the BJP and Congress in which the former grabbed most of the seats of the national apex body of housing cooperatives.
This time Satyanarayan Sharma had not fought the election for the Chairmanship due to the compulsion of MSCS Act but he did put up a proxy candidate in the race. Chairman of Maharashtra State Cooperative Housing Finance Corporation Limited Vishwas Bajirao Patil (NCP) got 7 votes whereas Vijay Singh, the winner got 9 votes.
While Congress leaders had eyed the two posts of Vice-Chairman, they could not win even one. There were three candidates -Mudit Verma, Chairman Sahakari Awas Nirman Avan Vitta Nigam, Vadilal B.Patel (ex-minister), Chairman, Gujarat State Cooperative Housing Finance Corporation, West Bengal State Cooperative Housing Federation, Chairman, Tapendra Mohan Biswas in the race for the post of Vice-Chairman.
There were 19 posts of director but only 16 people had filed nomination papers so all the directors were elected unopposed.
The elections were held only for the post Chairman and Vice-Chairman. The newly elected board would comprise two Ministers Arvind Singh Bhadoria, MP Cooperative Minister and Chairman MP State Cooperative Housing Federation Limited and S T Somashekar, Karnataka Cooperative Minister and Chairman Karnataka State Cooperative Housing Federation Limited.
Priyanka, Additional DM, South Delhi, had been appointed as the Returning officer.