Demand is politically motivated & will hit co-op movement, says union chairman.
The rivalry between the two major political parties of the state - the BJP and the Congress - in the cooperative sector has further intensified. After sweeping the elections to major cooperative bodies, the saffron party has trained its guns on the Congress-dominated Gujarat State Cooperative Union (GSCU). It now wants to block one of the sources of income for the district and state cooperative unions, which are largely controlled by the Congress.
The BJP-ruled Gujarat Urban Cooperative Banks Federation (GUCBF) has demanded that the contribution of urban cooperative banks towards education fund should be given to it.
Incidentally, every cooperative society in the state contributes around 2% of its profit, subject to a limit of Rs3 lakh, towards education fund, which is distributed between district and state cooperative unions in the ratio of 60% and 40% respectively.
GUCBF has alleged that GSCU has failed to provide technical knowledge to the cooperative banking sector in the state. "Urban cooperative banks need better technical knowhow but district and state cooperative unions have completely failed in providing such education," said Dollarray Kotecha, the newly-elected vice-chairman of GUCBF.
On the other hand, GUCBF has the necessary technology. As such, the federation has demanded the cooperative minister to allocate the education fund to the federation, he said.
However, GSCU is of the opinion that the GUCBF's demand is not in the best interests of the cooperative sector in the state. "GUCBF provides training to only around 300 cooperative banks, while GSCU is facilitating technical education to more than 58,000 cooperative societies," said Ghanshyam Amin, the chairman of Gujarat State Cooperative
Union. The demand is politically motivated, he said.
Earlier, the state government used to compensate losses of the state cooperative union, but this was stopped in 1998. The union receives around Rs1.5-2 crore per year towards education fund. Amin said that the provision of education fund is applicable at the national level and the GUCBF did not succeed in the past when it sought legal recourse in the matter.
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