The Vice President of National Cooperative Union of India Mr G H Amin has been appointed as one of the professional directors in the board of NALCO- a navratna PSU of Government of India.

Talking to Indiancooperative.com Mr Amin who was President of NCUI before Dr Chandra Pal Singh took over said “ it is recognition of cooperative movement by the government that a cooperative leader like me has been appointed in the board of NALCO dominated by highly trained professionals”.

NALCO Board comprises of two retired IAS officials, an IIM Ahmadabad professor, a chartered accountant of repute and others. The Board membership has tenure of 3 years.

Headquartered in Bhuveneshwar in Orisssa NALCO is holding its first board meeting in the state capital on 27^th January. Mr Amin would participate in the board meeting and see what could be done to strengthen cooperative movement from his latest elevation.

” Once a cooperative leader is always a cooperative leader’, he said underling his cooperative credentials.

In a rare show of solidarity Mr Chandra Pal Singh Yadav, President of NCUI has decided to quit the race in favour of Iffco candidate Shri K Srinivasa Gowda in run up to the mid-term election to ICA Board.

Election to the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) Board is to take place on the occasion of General Assembly slated on 14-18 November 2011 in Cancun. Talking to Indiancooperative.com from Jhansi, Mr Yadav said “I talked to various cooperative leaders in the country and everybody felt that we need to present united voice of Indian cooperatives at international level.

Cooperative leaders from IFFCO, Nafed, Nccf, Urban Cooperative banks, labour, fisheries were consulted and it was decided that I should sit in favour of Iffco nominee Mr Gowda”. Anyway, this is a mid-term election and once we offered late Surendra Jakhar the ICA board membership we decided to let his nominee continue.

To a question if he would fight in regular election, Mr Yadav said that it is too early to say as elections are two years away from now.

But I seriously believe that NCUI is the sole representative of Indian cooperative movement as it encompasses whole range of cooperative movements. Iffco represents only fertilizer, Amul represents only dairy so on and so forth; but NCUI represents the whole gamut of cooperative movements in the country, he added.

When Indiancooperative.com contacted Dr G N Saxena, Cooperative Director of IFFCO to take his reaction on this development, he thanked NCUI President for this gesture. “Dr Yadav is a cooperative leader and if he has withdrawn his candidature in favour of Iffco nominee in the spirit of cooperative solidarity, we are grateful to him”, he said.

Vacancies for two board members are there-one from India and second from Poland. There are twenty members on the board of ICA including President. Any country, no matter how big, can have just one member on the Board. There is varying number of delegates to General Assembly but in no case would it be more than 25 from a country. India has 12 delegates in General Assembly.

Indiancooperative.com wrote in earlier pieces that for a country like India which is at the helm of global cooperative movement, efforts should be made to have consensus candidate.

Talking to Indiacooperative.com, even ICA Asia-Pacific Regional Director Dr Chan Ho Choi had said that country matters not the individual.

ICA is an independent, non-governmental association which unites, represents and serves co-operatives worldwide. Founded in 1895, ICA has 254 member organisations from 94 countries active in all sectors of the economy. Together these co-operatives represent nearly one billion individuals worldwide.

On August 6, the 1,68,000 members of Saraswat Bank will vote for 16 new Board members at 200 polling stations across the country and will be monitored by an independent Returning Officer Mr H P Gemini. Out of these 16 members, 10 are from Mumbai, 4 from the rest of the state and 2 from rest of India.

The chances of incumbent Chairman’s Mr Eknath Thakur’s reelection is said to be bright as it during his tenure the bank has beaten the all powerful Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB) to emerge as number one in terms of turn over.

Bank, which has grown its balance sheet size by nearly six times and has achieved a total business level of over Rs 28,000 crore in the past 10 years has become India’s largest Urban Co-operative Bank.

Saraswat Bank was established in 1918 and  has consistently earned ‘A’ class for 93 years and has been a profit-making and dividend-paying Bank since its existence.

The 226 odd branches of the Bank are spread over six states – Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has now given a green signal to Saraswat Bank to extend its area of operation from the present six states to the entire country, making it a All-India Bank.

Watch these lines as we bring to you details of political maneuvering as the D day inches close. Elections are unpredictable and election in cooperatives are notorious for back room manipulations. Our representatives have  spread around to bring to you the  real picture.

Mr Dipak Dwivedi who is director on the Board of Nafed has been appointed as advisor in the prestigious Indira Gandhi National Open University in N Delhi.

Mr Dwivedi is primarily a journalist and a resident of Hardoi. He will give advice to VC. Cooperative leaders including NCUI President has on number of occasions demanded Cooperative’s inclusion in the curriculum of school and college education.

M.Sc from Lucknow University in organic chemistry, Mr Dwivedi is credited with many research papers and research projects. Talking to Indian Cooperative he said that battling corruption in cooperative is his main motto.

He advocated provision of Regulator for cooperatives as this sector is generally without monitoring by any Central Agencies. Cooperative sector today is not the  priority of government and it is unfortunate, he added.

Talking about Nafed he said that nafed is undergoing through a  bad phase. Though Prime Minister and Ministry of Finance have supported it with funds but much remains to be done. We are going to  put the fund to good use for the growth of Nafed, he concluded.

M.Sc from Lucknow University in organic chemistry, Mr Dwivedi is credited with many research papers and research projects. Talking to Indian Cooperative he said that battling corruption in cooperative is his main motto.

He advocated provision of Regulator for cooperatives as this sector is generally without monitoring by any Central Agencies. Cooperative sector today is not the  priority of government and it is unfortunate, he added.

Talking about Nafed he said that nafed is undergoing through a  bad phase. Though Prime Minister and Ministry of Finance have supported it with funds but much remains to be done. We are going to  put the fund to good use for the growth of Nafed, he concluded.