Amreli: Former Gujarat Minister, senior cooperative sector leader and Chairman GUJCOMASOL, Dilip Sanghani today raised a controversy by claiming that Co-founder of Amul Dr. Verghese Kurien used to fund the Christian missionaries involved in religious conversion out of the hard created wealth of the cattle owners of Gujarat.

Addressing a bike rally of Amul here, two days before the bi-rthday of Padma Vibhusan Kurien, who had also founded various institutions in dairy sector including the NDDB and was also known as ‘father of the white revolution in India’, Sanghani also claimed that the contribution of the founder of Amul, Tribhuvan Das Patel was forgotten to give prominence to Dr Kurien.

He claimed that Dr Kurien had given the fund to Christian missionaries out of Amul’s money which was hard-earned by the cattle owners and farmers of Gujarat who had toiled for the growth of the diary.

Sanghani also claimed that Dr Kurien was highlighted by the English dailies of his times due to the influence of Christian missionaries.

Later talking to media he stood by his statement and said that he did not deny Dr Kurien’s contribution to the dairy sector but was only putting forth another aspect of him.

‘Sardar Patel advised Tribhuvan Patel Anand Milk Union Ltd(AMUL) was run by Tribhuvan Patel and at later stage Kurien was added as jobber. Later Federation was also presided by Tribhuvanbhai. Later when Kurien became president of federation, he gave money to Christian missionaries, anyone can check it,’ said Sanghani.

Sanghani said Kurien was only highlighted by newspapers rather than Tribhuvanbhai.

Dr. Verghese Kurien (born 26 November 1921 – died 9 September 2012), was a social entrepreneur whose “billion-litre idea”, Operation Flood – the world’s largest agricultural dairy development programme,made dairy farming India’s largest self-sustaining industry and the largest rural employment provider.

DeshGujarat