Pramod Kumar Singh, the Chairman of Uttarakhand Cooperative Federation has reacted strongly to the cooperative minister Dan Singh Rawat’s assertion that 97 cooperative societies in the state are involved in alleged irregularities and all of them are being probed.
The minister said notices have been sent to the societies and if they failed to respond, these societies “would be disbanded and face stringent action.” The state has over 3500 co-operative societies involved in multifarious activities including providing of micro-finance to farmers, artisans and entrepreneurs.
Reacting sharply Pramod says “This is political vendetta to dislodge the societies that have been running smoothly for over ten years,”.
Action against only a few selected societies showed that ” this was part of a well-thought out strategy to target only Congress-backed co-operatives,” said PK Singh chairman, Uttarakhand State Cooperative Federation.
Earlier, the state govt had slapped a notice on Singh on the issue of hanky panky in the Federation. Talking to Indian Cooperative Singh said “these are false and baseless allegations; the notice that I have received from the govt does not even mention once about the Rs 17.5 crore scam.
It bears recall that Singh who is on the board of both NCUI and IFFCO. He is facing allegations of bribe to the tune of Rs 17.5 crore in two factories including Nainital based Soyabean Factory and Ranikhet based Drug Factory of the cooperative union.
Singh sees all these as gimmick as the co-op elections are due in the state.