Govt clears Bill to amend multi-state co-op law

The move comes after Union Cooperation Minister Amit Shah announced the government’s intention to amend the existing multi-state cooperative societies law. Shah had also announced bringing in a new national cooperative policy.

Soon after its formation in July 2021, the Cooperation Ministry began holding consultations with stakeholders on formulating a new cooperative policy and amending the existing law.

According to sources, the Bill will “incorporate provisions of the 97th Constitutional Amendment.” It will improve governance, reform electoral processes, “strengthen” monitoring mechanisms, “improve” composition of the Board, enhance transparency and accountability, improve ease of doing business, increase financial discipline and enable raising of funds in multi-state cooperative societies, a source said.

“Provisions for setting up of cooperative election authority, cooperative information officer, cooperative ombudsman, etc, have been proposed in order to make governance of multi-state cooperative societies more democratic, transparent and accountable,” the source said. “The election authority will ensure that elections are held in a fair, free and timely manner, which in turn will help reduce complaints and malpractices.”

Sources said the proposed Bill will have provision to debar offenders for three years and will bring in more “electoral discipline”. The cooperative ombudsman will set up a mechanism for redress of member grievances “in a structured fashion”, the source said.

According to sources, the Bill proposes to appoint a Cooperative Information Officer, who will “enhance” transparency by providing members timely access to information.

“To promote equity and facilitate inclusiveness, provisions relating to representation of women and Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe members on the board of multi-state cooperative societies have been included,” the source said. “To promote professional management, provisions have been made to bring in co-opted directors with experience in the field of banking, management, cooperative management and finance or having specialization in any field relating to the objects and activities undertaken by such multi-state cooperative society.”