Mumbai: Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has defended his government's move to amend the Maharashtra Cooperative Societies Act, saying the change is aimed at one thing — untangling the legal deadlock over who chairs the Kolhapur District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union.
The deadlock is real. In the Gokul board elections held on October 18, the panel backed by the Mahayuti won 12 seats. The Rajarshi Shahu Shetkari Samvichari Aghadi, the Congress-backed panel led by Satej Patil, won 13. Neither side can settle the chair.
Fadnavis, speaking on Saturday, said the government had no interest in taking control of the cooperative, known simply as Gokul. "The amendment is only to resolve the statutory deadlock," he said.
The Congress is not buying it. Patil said he would go ahead with the November 9 protest rally against the government's manoeuvre, which he described as directly "trampling on the mandate of farmers".
Gokul is the largest milk producers' union in Kolhapur district, and its board matters well beyond the cooperative sector. Dairy farmers across the district are tied to it, which makes control of the board a political question as much as a commercial one.
A near-equal split on a 25-seat board is exactly the kind of result that turns into a legal fight rather than a political one, and that is what the government says it is trying to end. Whether the amendment is drafted narrowly enough to settle Gokul without touching other cooperatives is the question the opposition is asking.
It is not yet clear whether the government will bring the amendment in the legislature session, or what form it will take. The Congress, meanwhile, has begun mobilising.
Patil's rally on Monday is being pitched to farmer organisations across Kolhapur and Pune, and both sides now have a week to frame the argument before it moves from the assembly to the street.
For farmers, the practical stake is simple: a board that cannot elect a chair cannot take decisions, and decisions on procurement and pricing are the ones they feel first.