Sohanlal Bhandari and Narendra Pawar from Pragati Panel have been elected unopposed as the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of Maharashtra based Nashik Merchants Cooperative Bank (NAMCO). The name was announced by Milind Bhalerao, Returning officer on Saturday evening.
The cooperators connected with the UCB heaved a sigh of relief as it was after a gap of four years that the Nashik Merchants Cooperative Bank elected Chairman and other office bearers. The Bank was under an Administrator for last four years.
In the election chairman-elect Bhandari had received 29,054 votes whereas Narendra Pawar had bagged 26,432 votes. Out of 1,76,262 voters only 63,839 cast their votes in the election. 36.21% polling was recorded.
Buoyed with the victory, Bhandari talked to Indian Cooperative and said, “Earlier also I was the chairman of bank and I am happy to be re-elected again for five years term. Our priority is to reduce the NPA of the bank in flat one year. During the administrator rule bank’s Gross NPA rose to 37% and Net NPA to 9%. When the board was there the Bank had 0% Net NPA and only 3% Gross NPA”, he added.
“We will take the strict action against those borrowers who are not re-paying the loans. Our priority will be to provide loans to traders with minimum rate of interest. I express my heartfelt gratitude to the shareholders who reposed trust in us again and gave us chance to take over the responsibility of bank again”, Bhandari, in whose tenure the RBI appointed an administrator in Bank, added.
Earlier, soon after winning the election the newly elected board met Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis who profusely greeted the winners.
Readers would note that, Pragati Panel won all the 21 seats beating the Sahakar Panel hands down. About 14 existing directors have been reelected; seven new directors have made it to the Board for the first time.
The Pragati, Sahakar and Namrata panels has fielded candidates for all posts and there were total 82 candidates were in fray.
The list is as follows:-
Chairman: Sohanlal Bhandari
Vice Chairman: Narendra Pawar
Directors: Vasant Gite, Hemant Dhatra, Prakash Dayma, Shivdas Daga, Avinash Gothi, Subhash Nahar, Kantilal Jain, Ranjan Thakare, Harish Lodha, Baban Gite, Vijay Sane, Praffula Sancheti, Mahendra Burad, Santosh Dhadiwal, Ashok Sonje, Bhanudas Chaudhary and Prashant Dive.
Women Directors: Shobha Chajed and Rajni Jategaonkar.
Nashik Merchant’s Cooperative (NAMCO) Bank was established on 11 June 1959 and is having 81 branches across the state of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Telangana.
Bank has total deposit of about Rs 1486.29 crores whereas loan and advances is about Rs 849.08 crores. Bank has earned a net profit of Rs 25 crore in last FY 2017-18 where as in FY 2016-17 it earned a net profit to the tune of Rs 37.68 crore.
