Fulfilling its dharma of being the apex body of cooperatives in the country, National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI) has called a meeting of Chairmen and elected heads of all the national level cooperative bodies in Delhi today.
“I have informed the Secretary of Agriculture and Cooperation in the Ministry that as you have left the elected heads out of the proposed Ministerial meeting scheduled for February 1, we have called a meeting to deliberate on the proposed amendments”, said NCUI President Dr Chandra Pal Singh Yadav to Indian Cooperative.
Yadav, who is also a member of the Upper House of Parliament was frank in his speech and said that the Ministry should have called, if not all then at least the elected heads of twelve notified Cooperative Federations of the country.
“Cooperators would discuss the proposed amendments threadbare and form an opinion regarding them. We would send minutes of meeting to the govt and it is up to them to take it seriously”, said Yadav assuring this correspondent of handing over a copy of the minutes to the Indian Cooperative for the benefits of readers.
It bears recall that the Union Ministry of Agriculture and farmers’ Welfare has called a meeting on February 1st to deliberate on proposed amendments in the MSCS Act 2002. Since not a single cooperator has been invited to the meeting Indian Cooperative carried a story titled “Futile exercise: Ministry calls a meeting on MSCS Act without cooperators!” The story has been read by millions of people as shown in our record.
Among 22 co-op organizations invited, the letter carefully omits the names of the elected heads and instead invites babus serving on salaries.
In the case of NCUI, leave aside the President, none of the Governing Council members have been invited. Similarly, in NAFCUB, its President Jyotindra Mehta was not invited and in the case of NAFSCOB its Chairman Dileep Sanghani has been ignored.
Sanghani is also believed to have written a letter the Ministry highlighting this faux pass. The only exception, perhaps is Sahakar Bharati where its President has been invited.
Talking to Indian Cooperative several cooperators argued that the co-operative movement is primarily people controlled and cooperators are peoples’ representatives and not managers.
