In the wake of the unprecedented success of Indian candidate Chandra Pal Singh Yadav at the ICA Asia Pacific elections, the ace co-operator has automatically become a board member of the global body of co-operatives known as the International Cooperative Alliance. Not only that, being the head of the regional body, Chandra Pal has also become an ex-officio Vice President of the apex global body of co-operatives, ICA.
With Chandra Pal’s elevation to the highest body, this is for the first time that India has two representatives at the ICA. IFFCO’s Aditya Yadav was earlier elected to the ICA Board. Incidentally, both of them belong to Uttar Pradesh and owe allegiance to the Samajwadi Party Patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Both of them also, in a way, share the IFFCO connection, as the latter played a crucial role in the impressive victory of Chandra Pal in the Tuesday election of ICA AP. Tarun Bhargava, the campaign chief of Chandra Pal is an Awasthi protégé. During the campaign, informed sources confide, Bharagav was constantly in touch with the IFFCO MD, a master craftsman of national and international cooperative politics.
ICA AP has 12 board members and 11 of them were elected in the Tuesday elections. Besides Chandra Pal, the two vice presidents were elected from China and Malaysia. Iran, another aspirant for Vice-Presidency had no luck.
Chandra Pal’s victory became obvious when the votes for the Board seats were cast. He was ahead of his Japanese rival by a huge margin even as a board member. China polled the highest number of votes here. But when the time for electing the President came, Chandra Pal beat Japan’s Chitose by 102 votes, a huge margin even by global standards.
Giving details, the Campaign Chief Tarun Bharagav said that all the major countries having a maximum of 25 votes, leaned towards Chandra Pal thereby registering such an impressive victory. He named China, Iran, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and many others on this list. “We had some votes even from Malaysia”, added Tarun.
The post-election analysis revealed that out of the 25 votes that India had with it, excepting one vote, all 24 were cast successfully in favour of Chandra Pal. One vote from India was found invalid as the voter had not generated the password and failed to execute his wish to cast a vote on time.
The Indian contingent has displayed unprecedented unity in supporting Chandra Pal, said Tarun Bharagav, who displayed a victory sign sitting with Chandra Pal soon after the results at Seoul.
“We have decided to celebrate the victory when we get back to India”, said Tarun hinting at Chandra Pal’s plan to organize a thanks-giving party in Delhi sooner than later.