Dabas loses by a whisker, Kushalkar makes it to GC

Ashok Dabas, the man who has the distinction of fighting the highest number of times at the NCUI elections was again unlucky on Monday when after a gruelling wait, VPP Nair was declared elected.

There was voting for two constituencies and the two winners were Sanjeev Kushalkar and VPP Nair. The voting was held for the state cooperative unions constituency and labour cooperative seat.

In the state union constituency Sanjiv Kushalkar from Maharashtra and Uday B Prabhu from Goa were in the fray. There were only three voters out of which Kushalkar received 2 votes and Prabhu got only one vote. The voter from Andhra Pradesh State Cooperative Union cast his vote in favor of Kushalkar, which led to him being elected as the director of GC of NCUI.

A tough fight was, however, seen in the labour cooperative constituency where Ashok Dabas contested V V P Nair. There were 15 votes, with one of them having announced earlier that he would not come due to marriage in the family. But even in the remaining 14 votes, one of the voters, Fishcopfed Chairman TRS Prasad Dora did not turn up.

It is being said that there was an objection from Prakash Lonare on Dora’s eligibility as a voter. Dabas, however, clarified that the Returning Officer has not yet disqualified him. In fact, Dabas, Nair and the staff involved with the election process waited till the deadline for him to come and vote.

It became clear soon after the start of the voting that while Nair has got 7 votes, Dabas has got 6, short by one vote. The long wait for the last vote which could have changed the outcome of the elections but Dora never came.

Nair’s victory was a foregone conclusion, given an unstinted support offered to him by Bijender Singh. Bijender not only ignored the friendly pressure from the likes of Chandra Pal and Sunil Singh, but also withstood severe ministerial pressure, sources say.

“Nobody knows Nair and it’s a victory of Bijender Singh; It was not Nair Vs Dabas but Singh Vs Dabas”, said co-operators assembled at the NCUI headquarters on the occasion. Though it looked that with Bijender against Dabas, the latter would suffer a humiliating defeat but it was not so. “Dabas lost just by one vote and in fact it was just his bad luck, he could have even won”, said some of his friends.

On the day of NCUI’s election, the gathering of a huge number of cooperative leaders from across the country was witnessed on Monday, who came to support their leaders for becoming a director on the board of the apex body of cooperatives.

It bears recall that NCUI elections elected Dileepbhai Sanghani as the new President. Two Vice-Presidents who were elected unopposed are Bijender Singh and Sivdasan Nair.

The newly elected Board also co-opted two members-Vishal Singh and Arun Tomar, leaving Ashok Dabas high and dry. The proposal to have Gurpratap Singh Khushalpur as a permanent Special Invitee was also accepted by the Board.