NCUI: Candidates throng Chandra Pal’s chamber seeking “blessings”

On the second day of nominations for the Governing Council seats at the NCUI headquarters, the picture of “would-be-successful candidates” became clearer to an extent. Uncertainly, however, prevails for 3 to 4 seats.

While Ved Prakash Setia was busy accepting nomination papers from the likes of H K Patil, Satish R Chandra, Ashok Dabas and Sanjeev Kushalkar and others, co-operators from across the country thronged the chamber of the outgoing President Dr Chandra Pal Singh seeking his support in their fight.

Having served two terms as the President, many candidates felt Chandra Pal’s words would carry weight with voters. This reporter spotted several candidates camping in his room. They included Sanjeev Kushalkar, Pramod Kumar Singh, Vishal Singh, Swarn Kamal Saha, G D Bakshi, among others. Even H K Patil came to meet Chandra Pal after filing nomination.

Caught in a tough situation, Chandra Pal had a hard time satisfying everyone. Chandrasekhar Singh from Balia lined up several top leaders on the phone to influence Yadav on the occasion. Expressing his helplessness Chandra Pal said “much as I would like to support Singh who is from my party and whom I know for 40 years I cannot help him.”

“Cooperative politics is different from electoral politics; your words and commitments define who you are. If I do not keep my words with one, how can I be taken seriously by others”, said Chandrapal hinting at his prior commitment given to Mudit Verma, against whom Chandrasekhar Singh is contesting.

“Left to ourselves we would have got the entire board elected without a vote cast”, claimed Chandra Pal pointing at the bonhomie being displayed by the two rivals– Vishal and Saha who occupied a corner of the Presidential chamber and helped each other with the nominations. “This is co-operative where rivals leave it on top leadership to decide for them”, Chandra Pal said underlining the strength of co-op politics.

Chandra Pal’s sense of well-being has however, been dented a little by the entry of Sahakar Bharati in the scene. Sahakar Bharati has made it tough on a few seats where voting seems inevitable. These include multistate, and some of the state co-op unions.

Coming to nominations, those who seemed to have emerged victorious so far are G H Amin from Gujarat, Sunil Singh of Biscomaun, Sanjeev Kushalkar of Labour Fed, Pune, Mudit Verma from Lucknow and Jeena Postangbam from Imphal.

Those who face a tough battle ahead are S N Sharma from Chhattisgarh, Pramod Singh from Uttarakhand, Swarna Kamal Saha from West Bengal.

Indian Cooperative had already declared earlier that six candidates have won and await formal announcement by the RO. They are Dr Chandra Pal Singh, Dileep Sanghani, Bijender Singh, Mangal Jeet Rai, Koliakode Krishnan from Kerala State Co-op Union and Pradeep Kumar from Uttarakhand. One can add the names of Amin, Sunil, Jeena, H K Patil and V P Singh safely to the list of victors.

Meanwhile, the election campaign has intensified for the constituencies which have a large number of voters. Nominations will end today on 19th Nov. Scrutiny and final list of eligible candidates will be published by tomorrow evening. Nov 21 has been kept for withdrawal and the evening of the same day it would be known how many candidates are finally in fray.