Anand: The board of directors of the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers Union Ltd popularly known as Amul Diary, which is the original Amul cooperative built by legends like Tribhuvandas Patel and Verghese Kurien, today formally elected Ramsinh Parmar as its Chairman for the fourth consecutive term.

The board meeting was held after a long drawn legal battle owing to nomination of 3 nominees by the government ( after the intervention by the Registrar of Companies) soon after the win of Ramsinh’s Parmar’s panel in the last election held in May 2015.

Apart from election of Ramsinh, a sitting Congress MLA from Thasra, as chairman, another Congress MLA from Borsad Rajendrasinh Parmar was elected as the vice chairman of the board, MD of the dairy K Ratnam said.

The general elections to elect the 13 directors of the dairy is held every five years.

Amul Diary is the only non-BJP controlled among 17 district unions affiliated to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF).

In the election for the managing committee held on May 12, 2015, 10 out of the 13 members who won were from the earlier Congress-led board. The remaining three elected members were BJP functionaries. But on May 22, the Registrar of Cooperatives (RCS) nominated three members to the union’s committee by invoking Section 80(2) of the Gujarat Cooperative Societies Act (GSCA), giving the state government the power to nominate three representatives on the board of any cooperative while citing “public interest”.

The union’s bylaws provide for 17 members in its board of directors. That includes 13 elected members, one nominee of the RCS, two representatives of financial institutions (in this case, the Kaira District Central Cooperative Bank and the National Dairy Development Board), and one from the GCMMF. Under the GSCA, the total board strength can go up to 21 members.

The 3 nominations were challenged by the winning panel and last month after a long drawn battle in Gujarat High Court the state government withdrew the 3 nominees after which the meeting of the board has been held to elect the chairman and other office bearers.

Amul Dairy, had a turnover of Rs 4825 crores in 2015-16 has 6,83,130 producer members with 1217 Village Dairy Cooperative Societies and it has a total Milk Handling Capacity of 5 Million liters per day. It collects average 1.9 Million liters of milk per day.

DeshGujarat