No interest in Gokul, amendment is only to resolve statutory deadlock: Fadnavis

MUMBAI: Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday defended his government's decision to amend the Maharashtra Cooperative Societies Act, saying the move was necessitated by the "legal impasse" over the election of the Kolhapur District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union's chairperson.

Fadnavis claimed that the government had no interest in taking control of the cooperative, popularly known as the Gokul Cooperative, and was merely trying to resolve the statutory deadlock. Meanwhile, Congress leader Satej Patil said he would go ahead with the November 9 protest rally against the government's manoeuvre, which was directly "trampling on the mandate of farmers".

The so-called impasse occurred after the panel backed by the Mahayuti won 12 seats in the Gokul Board elections held on October 18 while the Rajarshi Shahu Shetkari Samvichari Aghadi (RSSSA), the Congress-backed panel led by Satej Patil, won 13. The Mahayuti members subsequently stayed away from the meeting to elect the chairperson, leading to the quorum remaining unfulfilled.

Immediately after this, and despite huge criticism, the Mahayuti government on Friday issued an ordinance to amend the Maharashtra Cooperative Societies Act. The amendment will increase the government-nominated directors on cooperative bodies with a turnover of over ₹500 crore from two to five and also give them voting rights. So far, government-nominated directors never had voting rights. This move will pave the way for the Mahayuti-backed panel to elect its own chairperson although it lost the elections to the RSSSA.

After Satej Patil approached the Kolhapur bench of the Bombay high court, the court directed all 25 members to be present at the next meeting on November 10, which, in effect, fulfills the quorum and allows the election to proceed. However, Fadnavis, while speaking to the media in Nagpur, said, "Although the court directed that the election be conducted on November 10, it has not waived the mandatory quorum requirement. Consequently, the election could again be stalled if one group boycotts the meeting." Legal experts said that if the 25 members did not attend, it would amount to contempt of court.

Fadnavis, said that if after three meetings, there was no quorum, the government administrator would automatically take over. "To ensure that the elected representatives get voting rights, we have given voting rights to government-nominated members," he claimed.

The CM said the decision was taken by the state cabinet after leaders from all three ruling alliance partners brought the legal complication to its notice. "We sought the advocate-general's opinion and consulted the law and judiciary department before finalising the proposal," he claimed. However, an official from the cooperation department had earlier told HT that the decision to grant voting rights to four government-nominated members was taken despite opposition from officers in the cooperation and law and judiciary departments.

Fadnavis claimed to be indifferent to controlling the cooperative, which has around 5,000 voters and whose influence is largely confined to one district and a few talukas. "The state government has no particular interest in controlling such an institution," he said. "Our intervention was limited to fulfilling its statutory responsibility. Local leaders Hasan Mushrif, Vinay Kore and Satej Patil should sit together and arrive at a consensus. If they decide amicably, there will be no need for government intervention."

The CM rejected suggestions that the Gokul controversy could have an impact on state politics, pointing to the subsequent local council elections in which Satej Patil's candidate finished fourth in the teachers' constituency while the BJP candidate won. Responding to the criticism of people who had read former CJI B R Gavai's dissenting legal opinion to the government, Fadnavis claimed that the "one-sided" opinion was based on facts presented by the "Satej Patil camp" and claimed that Gavai had not been made aware of the crucial issue that neither faction had sufficient members to meet the quorum and that the election could not proceed without it.

Meanwhile Satej Patil said he would go ahead with the protest rally planned in Kolhapur on Monday. "The government has trampled upon the mandate of the farmers," he said. "The people of Kolhapur will not forget this."