The NAFED Board decided to end the services of Managing Director CV Bose on Friday even as Agricultural Ministry termed this Board meeting illegal. The Board resolution was sent to agricultural ministry requesting it to take back Mr. Bose’s services. It seems the fight between Ministry and Nafed’s elected body is turning murkier every day.
Asked what was the reason Bose has been sent back, Nafed Chairman and Congress MLA from Delhi Dr Bijender Singh said that Bose was proving very expensive for the federation as his personal expenditure amounted to huge sums. He would offer drinks to friends at the cost of Nafed which the beleaguered corporation is not able to bear presently. Dr Bijender also charged him of non-cooperation to elected representative.
The MD and the Ministry have their own version of things. According to sources some board members of Nafed indulged into all kinds of hanky-panky including embezzlement of fund. It is also said that fake societies were floated by the members to make money. Mr. Bose an IAS official in govt of India was trying to get at the roots of rackets which disturbed some of the board members.
A probe committee set up to investigate year 2003-4 tie-up losses of Nafed found that top officials with their “notorious tie-ups” with some private businesses made Nafed extend counter guarantees on loans taken by them without any security, with the connivance of a few board members. It is also reliably learnt that Delhi police has arrested the former additional managing director Homi Rajvanshi — and a Delhi-based businessman identified as O.P. Aggarwal in this connection.
The happenings at Nafed prove that Indian cooperative movement is a movement only in name. In majority of cases the elected representative and the appointed government nominee develop their own vested interest. We do not hear anything till they cooperative with each other but skeletons start falling from the cupboard once their interest clash. And who suffers ultimately is voiceless, remote farmers. So sad!