By Ajay Jha
Indian Cooperative and Bhartiya Sahkarita.com the only news portal for cooperative sector had to bear the brunt of degrading NCUI politics in the wake of the election. The two sites- both Hindi and English were hacked by those who wanted to silence the neutral voice.
For the whole of Sunday and partly Saturday night the site remained down with the entire technical team was driven to nervous edge fighting off the hacking. Who are they and what would they get out of it, we wonder.
It is true that the election campaigning for NCUI seats stooped very low and used dirty tricks , generally visible during the general elections. The sheer size of the Electoral College and the fact that representatives from Kerala to Kashmir wanted to have a foot-hold in the national body- made it uncommon. We have done a story on the same in these columns earlier.
Keeping up with the tradition of true journalism we have given space to every opinion. Readers would recall that we extensively cross-examined the outgoing President Chandra Pal Singh Yadav when the outgoing GC member Ashok Dabas leveled charges against him. And we are indeed debted to him for being patient with us. A leader is not made in a day and you need to have the tolerance to listen to opposing voices.
Being a cooperative platform we cannot afford to be one-sided and carry any point of view without getting response from the concerned player. We have done so. Always! We have not hesitated in asking questions even to our sponsors such as R S Sodhi of Amul fame or Dr US Awasthi , IFFCO MD in the past. And we believe that a true leader is open to unmotivated examination.
And that explains why we have become popular by going from 30 thousand to one lakh daily hits in a short span of time. We have been critically examining the mightiest of the cooperative leaders without fear or favour.
If the vested interests think of silencing us they are mistaken. Journalists associated with us are old hands with many years of experiences in both print and electronic media. They have braved the worst of dictators and cooperated with best of the democrats.