Centre to make amendment in Cooperative Act: Pawar

Thane, Feb 17 (UNI) The Centre will soon make an amendment in the Cooperative Act to reduce hold of the state governments over cooperatives, thereby giving more responsibility to the members of the latter.

An announcement to this effect was made by Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, while talking to newspersons during his visit to Thane.

It has been observed that whenever the government changes in any state, the first thing the party in power do was to dissolve the cooperatives, thus adversely affecting the cooperative movement in the state and country, the Minister noted and therefore , said, they felt the need for such an amendment.

''The members of the cooperative institutions, including the banks, will now be empowered to conduct elections to the institutions and also to audit their accounts, thus avoiding interference by the state government in their affairs,'' Mr Pawar said.

He said the Centre would make the amendment in the act as it wanted the cooperative movement in the country to survive.

Mr Pawar also indicated that the Centre was seriously considering a proposal for granting exemption to farmers from repayment of loans as they were not in a position to repay them due to various reasons.

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