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ShareAhmedabad: A saffron wave swept the elections to the board of directors of the Gujarat Urban Cooperative Banks Federation (GUCBF), on Friday. Of the total 21 directors of GUCBF, 11 BJP-supported directors from 10 districts were elected unopposed. The other 10 director's seats were also won by candidates supported by the saffron party. Put simply, all the directors on the board of the apex body for around 270 urban cooperative banks of the state are now BJP-supported candidates. The cooperative body, once pioneered by the Congress to make inroads into rival vote banks, has now well and truly become a saffron bastion.
The 11 bankers who were elected unopposed, include the current chairman of the federation, Jyotindra Mehta. The chairman of Gujarat State Cooperative Bank, Ajay Patel, who was also elected unopposed, had filed his nomination from the United Cooperative Bank. He cleared the way for one more BJP-supported banker as the GSCB has a permanent seat on the board of directors of the GUCBF.
The chairman of the bank will be selected at the first board meeting, to be convened in the first week of December.
After losing in the elections of the Kheda District Cooperative Bank, the BJP did not want its grip on the cooperative sector to be weakened further. The party had, therefore, asked very powerful people to contest Friday's election.For the 10 seats on the board of directors, there were 22 bankers in the fray. Three of these could not fetch even a single vote, while three other bankers could poll only one vote each.
