By Our Staff Reporter
DEHRADUN, 27 Jul: The Multi-State Cooperative Societies (Amendment) Bill-2022 will prove to be important in achieving the objectives of the cooperative movement. With the new provisions added to this bill, the functioning of cooperative institutions will be more effective and transparent. Affirming this, State Cooperatives Minister Dr Dhan Singh Rawat thanked the Prime Minister and the Union Cooperatives Minister for getting the bill passed in the Lok Sabha. He expressed confidence that this would prove better for the cooperatives sector.
Dr Dhan Singh Rawat said in a statement issued to the media that the passing of the Multi-State Cooperative Societies (Amendment) Bill-2022 in the Lok Sabha is historic. He said that, with this amendment, dynastic rule will end in the management of cooperatives and the common people will get a chance to join cooperatives.
Minister Rawat said that the provision of the Election Authority has been kept in the bill to conduct free elections, which is almost like the Election Commission and there will be no scope for government interference. Apart from this, provision for cooperative information officer election authority and cooperative ombudsman has also been made. Re-elections will be held when one-third of the seats in the Board of Directors become vacant. The chairperson, vice-chairpersons and members of the committees will be required to call a board meeting every three months. Efforts have been made to bring transparency in the governance of the committee by keeping majority provisions for equity shareholders.
The computerisation of 63 thousand PACS has been done since the formation of a separate ministry at the Centre. He said that all 670 committees of Uttarakhand have been computerised, which is a big achievement for the state. Grain storage capacity is being increased in the state, for this new godowns have been built in hilly districts.
The minister added that people are taking advantage of various schemes run by cooperatives on a large scale. He informed about the Deendayal Upadhyaya Sahakarita Kisan Kalyan Yojana that, in the financial year 2022-23, interest-free loans of Rs 624.84 crore were distributed to 90,230 beneficiaries. From the year 2017 to June 2023, interest-free loans of Rs 4347 crore were made available to more than 7 lakh beneficiary farmers under this scheme. Due to this, the beneficiaries got a lot of benefits and it helped the farmers to double their income.
