TRS eyeing cooperative societies to prove its supremacy

Karimnagar: After pulling off a massive victory in all most all the constituencies in Assembly polls for two consecutive times in Karimnagar district, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) district unit is gearing up to contest in cooperative society elections on a mission mode and is firm to capture all of them.

The State party believes gaining control over cooperative societies which has crores of rupees turnover and huge amounts of deposits is crucial to further consolidate its position both in the district and in the State and also to checkmate Congress and other parties in the district.

According to sources, the elections for primary agricultural cooperative societies (PACS) in Karimnagar district likely to be held in the last week of January or in the first week of February next year.

The officials of District Cooperative department are taking all necessary measures for conducting the elections of cooperative societies in the erstwhile Karimnagar district in case of postponement of panchayat elections or along with the panchayat elections at one time. The officials are conducting training classes to the polling staff along with identification of polling centres and arrangements of ballot boxes.

The cooperative department will publish and release the list of members of the Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) for respective societies by December 22. The department will receive objections if any to the membership until December 24 and the final list will be displayed on December 28 along with submitting a report to the election officer by December 30.

There are about 127 PACS in the erstwhile Karimnagar district and the elections will be held for electing as many as 1,651 members of directors, as there will be 13 directors per each society. District Cooperative Central Bank (DCCB) will function as the apex body to the societies. The elections for the DCCB chairman will be held after conducting the PACS elections.

Out of the four districts - Karimnagar, Jagtial, Peddapalli and Sircilla - Jagtial district has 51, highest number of societies and Peddapalli has 20, the minimum number of societies.

Directors of a few societies have been elected unanimously in the elections held previously. But this time, the State Cooperative Society is taking all measures for conducting the elections in a fair and transparent manner.

About 2.20 lakhs of cooperative voters will utilise their voting right in the erstwhile Karimnagar district. Highest number of voters - 49,000 were registered in the 50 societies in Karimnagar district while the lowest number of voters – 32,835 was registered in about the 20 societies in Peddapalli district.

It is to be noted here that the government had constituted Telangana State Cooperative Election Authority besides amending the procedure for governing elections to the cooperative societies. Accordingly, electoral rolls carry photographs of the electors of all the societies.

Besides, the government took note of the serious issues of administration and governance in the three-tier credit structure in the wake of implementation of the revival package and it mandated comprehensive amendment to the existing Cooperative Societies Act, 1964, to make the structure more vibrant and accountable.