The Annual General Body meeting of the national apex cooperative body NCUI resolved to take the fight to the country’s parliament should the situation warrant it. President Chandra Pal Singh Yadav declared at the NCUI Auditorium in Delhi on Monday.
“A special resolution is being placed before the General body in the wake of an extraordinary development arising out of the recent recommendations of the RBI panel advocating corporatization of co-operative banks. We may invite all the important cooperative leaders from across the nation and observe sit-in dharna before Parliament during the winter session”, Chandra Pal said amid cheers from the participants.
Earlier Governing Council member Mr Jyotindra Mehta placed the subject before the assembly. Mehta said in corporate if a share holder has huge share capital he can dictate terms while in cooperatives a share holder of Rs 1 lac and Rs one has equal voting rights. It is a system based on the principle of equality, he added.
If you think it is only against urban cooperative banks you are mistaken. Coupled with the amendments in the Multi State Cooperative Act 2002 ( likely to be tabled in Parliament soon)-they have potential of reducing the cooperative movement to a cipher. Whatever little participation you see today in this auditorium would also be not there, Mehta predicted a scary future.
Earlier, in his presidential speech Chandra Pal Singh Yadav said NCUI plans to form a Parliamentarians’ Forum under the leadership of Shri Suresh Prabhu. MPs of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha would be its members and it would aim at placing the concerns of the cooperative sector before the House.
Yadav also exhorted members to express themselves freely in the AGM. He said a future road map for cooperative development must be worked out keeping in mind at least two decades down the line.
The issues that assail the cooperative sector today such as dwindling shares of co-operative loans in the agricultural sector, the 97th CAA remaining a non starter so far, the specter of Direct tax code and last but not least the Gandhi panel report on conversion of UCBs into corporate formed part of Chandra Pal’s speech.
On the positive side, he lauded the role of NCCT and NCCE in training and education. Breaking past records, the NCCT organized 2315 training programmes in which more than 74653 cooperators participated. Similarly, the NCCE organized 89 programmes and educated 2886 participants. He also referred to successful completion of Colloquium, training of SAARC countries and tie-up with Bhagat Phul Singh Mahila Vishwavidyalay.
He also underlined the increasing role of social media and lauded IFFCO for being ahead in this field.
Several participants spoke on this occasion such as Ram Babu Singh from Bihar, W Z Tekam from Maharashtra, Mr Suryanarayanan from Andhra, Padmanabha of Campco from Manglore, Laxmi Dass of Delhi’s NAFCUB and others.
