Unwelcome News: Amul fails to find a place in NCUI’s delegate list

The pride of the dairy cooperative movement in India, Amul failed to make it to the voters’ list published by Returning Officer Sunil Kumar on Monday, leading to a whispering campaign in the cooperative corridor.

It bears recall that National Cooperative Union of India’s final list of eligible voters came out on Monday evening. Out of 250 voters only 132 are eligible to cast their votes during the election which is scheduled for 23rd November 2020.

GCMMF is one of the star voters figuring in the list of about 118 rejected candidates. While majority of those not figuring in the list were rejected on the ground of non-payment of dues on time, Amul lost the game due to inappropriate resolution offered by it, sources add.

Indian Cooperative sources say that GCMMF’s candidature was rejected on the grounds of inappropriate resolution of the GCMMF Board presented before the Returning Officer. When Indian Cooperative asked NCUI Chief Executive N Satyanarayan about this, he said “NCUI has nothing to do with who qualifies as an eligible delegate and it only concerns itself with supplying all the necessary documents to the RO.

Sources close to the Returning Officer were also clueless about the development. They, however, reiterated that the RO has strictly followed the papers put before him.

Whatever be the case, the fact remains that Amul’s absence from the voter list is as much a loss of Amul as that of NCUI. Being a representative body of cooperatives of the country NCUI has to take everybody along and specially those which have brought laurels to the movement, echoed several co-operators.

Some of the co-operators even felt that in the era of email communications it was no big deal to get the error rectified in a matter of a few seconds. “It was Amul after all and you can’t afford to show cavalier attitude towards it”, they averred. Others, however, felt that rule of law should apply to everyone-big or small.

Whispers were also heard that in the case of Kerala State Co-operative Bank nomination papers of an officer of the rank of General Manager were accepted, though it was pointed out that the act permits anyone from the top four persons -Chairman, Directors, MD or OSD qualify to be a delegate.

Besides Amul, other high-profile co-operators whose nominations were rejected include, UP State Co-op Bank Chairman Tejveer Singh, Jharkhand State Co-op Bank Chairman Abhay Kant Prasad, Telangana State Coop Apex Bank President K Ravinder Rao, Indian Labour Cooperative Society Director Arun Singh Tomar, among others.

Harjit Singh Grewal, Vice-Chairman of NACOF also failed to make it to the list. Pradeep Kumar, Chairman of Uttarakhand Pradeshik Cooperative Union and member of Sahakar Bharati is a clear winner as there is no rival against him.

It bears recall that NCUI has about 16 Board seats for which elections are supposed to be held. According to a source, the nominations for election to the GC may begin from November 17.