NCUI President Dr Chandra Pal Singh and Chief Executive N Satyanarayan met Union Minister Radha Mohan Singh recently to express their opposition to certain provisions of the proposed [amendment] MSCS Act 2002 which has been hanging in the balance since 2010.
Besides the minister, the meeting was attended by several top officials of the Ministry, adds a source.
The proposed amendments to the bill were referred to the Joint Parliamentary Committee where cooperators of all hues made their representations. Though, there is little hope of the amendment being passed in the upcoming budget due to its tight schedule, cooperators wanted to express their opinion as a last ditch effort.
The passage of the 97th Constitutional Amendment- elevating the right to form co-operative as one of the Fundamental Rights– necessitated the need to amend the MSCS Act 2002 to keep it in tune with it.
Among many things, what bothers NCUI the most is the issue of the custody of Education Fund the amendment provides for keeping with some agencies such as NCDC. Talking to Indian Cooperative NCUI Chief Executive said
“NCUI was conceived with the purpose of preparing the country for a robust cooperative movement. It aims and does train thousands of people into cooperative principles every year. It is but natural that the Education Fund rests with the apex body; after all it is controlled by a Committee which comprises Ministry officials as members as well”, Satyanarayan underlined.
The second issue raised by NCUI top guns related to one of the provisions of the proposed amendment which talks of easy conversion of co-ops into companies. Knowledgeable sources, however say that this provision has been dropped by the NDA government. Sahakar Bharati- a govt leaning co-op body had also made a strong case against this.
The third issue raised by NCUI in the Ministerial meeting related to the return of share capital not at market value but at face value. NCUI has made a strong pitch for the face value reminding the Minister of the nature of cooperatives.
Earlier, Sahakar Bharati Patron Satish Marathe also wrote a letter to the Minister (he mailed a copy to Indian Cooperative also) opposing several provisions of the proposed amendment. “The UPA govt introduced many such amendments which the Parliamentary Committee headed by Basudev Acharya rejected outright as repugnant to the spirit of the cooperative movement”, Marathe said.
It was cooperative’s sheer luck that the UPA govt could not pass the bill due to other pressing engagements. Now we have high hopes from the NDA govt and the amendment would not smother the cooperative movement. Rather it would give an impetus to it, Marathe sounded optimistic.