Fishcopfed: Dora elected Chairman, Lonare shown door

A dark horse from Odisha T.Prasad Rao Dora was elected Chairman of Fishcopfed -the apex body of fisheries cooperatives in an election on Friday amid allegations and counter-allegations. Dora edged out Prakash Lonare , a cooperator from Nagpur.

Earlier the outgoing Chairmen Lonare suffered a humiliating defeat as he could bag only 10 votes while his rival from Maharashtra R P Shinde, Chairman of Rajya Machimar Sahkar Sangh, Mumbai got 21 votes.

Three constituencies i.e. Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Manipur were up for grabs. From Madhya Pradesh and Manipur U K Subhudhi and K Navchandra Singh were elected respectively. Strangely enough, all the winners got 21 votes and all the loser bagged 10 votes. “It was due to panel voting”, explained MD B K Mishra who oversaw the election process and assisted Returning Officer in keeping the process fair and transparent.

Nine Directors were elected unopposed and they mostly came from State Federations. An euphoric Mishra said these are the bodies which truly represent the fisheries sector compared to district federations that had been active in the past elections. There was also a nominated member from NCDC.

Soon after the elections of the new Board the elected Directors met to choose Chairman and Vice- Chairman. Announcing the result, Returning officer R. S.Talwar said T.Prasad Rao from Odisha is elected as the chairman and R.P.Sandhe from Mumbai as the Vice-Chairman of Fishcopfed.

T.Prasad Rao Dora was profusely garlanded soon after the declaration of his name. This election was different from that of the past in the sense that majority of members elected to the Board are first-timers, Lonare putting it to as high as 90 in terms of percentage. And the new voters counted about 60 percent.

Patting himself on the back , MD Mishra said it is after all good news for the cooperative sector- often accused of distributing prized positions to the chosen few, we have proved how fair elections are conducted, he added.

Mishra had ensured everything-cameras, police and media to tackle any untoward scenario. But that did not mean there were no scenes. There were heated exchanges on the issue of 5 voters who according to Lonare were eligible to vote. “They cannot as they have not completed one year of membership”, argued Mishra. Later Police was called in to diffuse the tension.