The recent elections of the board of directors of the Goa state cooperative bank have stirred controversy as the govt wrested control of the bank even if the govt backed candidate BJP MLA Phaldesai had initially lost to the panel led by the bank chairman Ramchandra Mule.

Addressing the press Chief Minister Manohar Parikar claimed, majority of the elected members have met him and urged resurrection of the bank. Parikar assured the new board of directors of his full support.  The outgoing management led by Mule was corrupt and indulged in gross irregularities with abandonment.  Appropriate legal action would be initiated against the outgoing management, Pariker   added.

Within a couple of hours after the vote, there was a sudden change in the situation. Some of Mule’s elected supporters changed their mind and extended their support to Phaldesai. Thus Mule stood dislodged from power.

The Goa state cooperative bank is the fulcrum of the cooperative sector in the state. The bank claims a total deposit of Rs 11000 crore.

According to the chief minister, the bank is in a difficult situation with an unusually high NPA and poor capital adequacy ratio. The Rs 46 crore loan the govt owned Kadamba transport corporation owes the bank would be sorted out as soon as the new management starts functioning, he noted.

On the other hand, a crestfallen Mule is in confabulations with his supporters and still trying to effect a shift in the balance of forces in his favour. He insists the elections for the chairmanship and vice-chairmanship should be held without any delay.

Mudit Verma is a senior cooperative leader from the state of Uttar Pradesh who is heading two cooperative federations including a cooperative bank. He is also Governing Council member of National Cooperative Union of India.

Recently NCUI launched itself into an exercise of eliciting GC Members take on the proposed changes in the bye-laws of NCUI.

Mr Verma has sent some suggestions which are respectful of Multi State Cooperative Societies Act 2002 on one hand and emphatic on preserving the cooperativeness of NCUI on the other.

Mr Verma says elected member of Governing council should cease to be member of GC if he loses his position in his parent society.

On the formations of constituency for the election of GC, he says “Nine members should be elected from the constituency from among the member State Cooperative Union and cooperative Union Territories. These nine members come from across the states. J & K, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh combine together to elect one GC member while states of Maharashtra, Andhra and Goa combine to send another GC member. Similar is the case with other states.

On the election of highest contributors to the Cooperative Education Fund Verma suggests that “delegates should be elected from the 20 highest contributors”.

On the representation of other various cooperative federations at both national and state levels such as Fishcopfed, NFCL, NHEC and others Mr Verma wants to include “ Other State Cooperative Federations and Association which are not included in this list”.

Plus he suggests that one member should be elected from delegates of multi state cooperative societies separately.
Election procedure for the constitution of GC has been a headache for NCUI and drags it to the court every now and then. Dearth of proposer and seconder from the same constituency when it is small leads to constitutional crisis for NCUI often.

Mudit Verma says “member of GC should be elected by and from amongst the delegates of respective constituencies. If there is more than one vacancy, each voter should be entitled to cast votes up to number of vacancies and the contestants securing highest votes should be elected to the extent of the vacancies.

(Indian Cooperative seeks suggestions by other GC members also at info@indiancooperative.com)

Last Sunday, after 12 years, there were elections of the board of directors in Bombay Mercantile bank -a cooperative bank for the minority in the country. The elections were held in its various branches across India.

The RBI conducted the elections in compliance with the Bombay high court directive. A shareholder of the bank had petitioned the high court for holding the elections.
According to the informed sources, there were 52 candidates in all for 15 positions on the board of directors.

However, many shareholders have expressed their displeasure over the way the elections have been conducted and even charged that some people who wanted to fight elections were not allowed to do so.

They have deplored the fact that proper information was not made available to those who wanted to participate in the elections and there obtained throughout confusion among the shareholders about the electoral proceedings

It bears repetition that Bombay mercantile bank had been beset by enormous non-performing assets and therefore had earlier been superseded by the RBI.

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.