NAFCUB: Mehta wins arbitration, likely to be restored today

The long drawn legal battle on who would be the President of the apex body of urban cooperative banks and credit cooperative societies NAFCUB has come to an end with the arbitrator Subhas Chandra Gupta upholding the rights of the Board to remove President, Mukund Abhayankar in the present case.

The issue before the second arbitrator was if in the absence of clarity in bylaws or in the provisions of Act, a no confidence motion could be moved against the President. The Arbitrator passed a clear cut directive that “yes it can be done”, emphasizing the inherent democratic norms of a majority in an organization.

With this, the deck are cleared for Jyotindra Mehta to take over. The NAFCUB has its AGM scheduled for tomorrow (Saturday) and its board is meeting today. According to an insider. the Board may restore Mehta as the president after a gap of two years- a period in which the apex body idled doing nothing for the co-op movement.

Earlier, the Delhi High Court had ruled that the Award given by the first arbitrator G C Saxena was non-executable, thereby ending all the suspense in the matter. Talking to Indian Cooperative, Mehta was however, evasive and asked this correspondent to wait till the Board meets.

But even if Mehta reclaims his position there is little he can do as the current Board would be completing its tenure by the next February, said a Director. There is going to be an election early next year, he added.

“If restored by the Board I will try my level best to work on the idea of an Umbrella Organization for the UCBs”, said Mehta. There are lots of things to be done and very little time, Mehta conceded.

Cooperators connected with Nafcub, meanwhile, thank the Arbitrator Subhas Chandra Gupta for resolving the ticklish law point with his legal insight, in the case of lack of clarity in bylaws. “Don’t forget he is a Phd in law and has a formidable legal insight”, said a cooperator.

Earlier, the Arbitration had set aside the proceedings of the two board meetings 147th and 148th. In the 147th Board meeting, a no-confidence motion was passed against Abhyankar and the 148th meeting decided to go for fresh elections.

Nafcub represents more than 1700 urban cooperative banks and thousands of credit co-ops in the country. The state of uncertainty in the apex organization did not augur well for the cooperative movement in the country.