Goa Dairy: Directors issue no-trust motion notice against chairman

PONDA: The ongoing imbroglio at Goa Dairy took another twist on Wednesday, as eight of the 11 directors have held back the suspension of the managing director N C Sawant and instead issued a notice of no-trust motion against chairman Madhav Sahakari.
The directors claim that decisions like suspension should be taken by the board of directors and not by the chairman alone. Going against the chairman’s suspension order, the eight directors including Vithoba Dessai, Naresh D Malik, Anselmo Furtado, Rajesh K Fal Dessai, Baburao Fatto Desai, Rajendra Sawal, Dhanajay Desai and Gurudas K Parab have directed Sawant not to allow Sahakari to issue any orders without resolution of the board of directors and in default, he will be held responsible.

Claiming that they have lost confidence in Sahakari, the directors have also written to the registrar of cooperative societies to convene a special meeting to vote on the no-trust motion. On Tuesday, Sahakari suspended Sawant after the registrar Sanjiv Gadkar had appointed chartered accountant Shridhar alias Yatish Vernekar to conduct an inquiry into alleged irregularities in procuring dairy machineries and equipments.

Sahakari had justified that the decision to remove the MD was taken to make way for an impartial inquiry into the alleged irregularities. A day prior to it, addressing a press conference in Ponda, Sahakari had alleged that Sawant had misappropriated crores of rupees by manipulating the tendering process to procure several machineries and equipments at the dairy and had demanded that the government should conduct an inquiry into the tendering processes by a chartered accountant.

And considering his request, the registrar had appointed the chartered accountant to conduct the inquiry. As per the order issued by the registrar, Vernekar has to examine the procedure applied while purchasing of five fill pack machines, purchase of machineries for the ice cream plant, purchase of milk from outside state, purchase of raw material for the cattlefeed plant, recruitment of new employees and utilization of funds allotted by the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).

Sahakari had even directed Sawant to hand his charge over to his sub-ordinate Ajit Kossambe. However, Sawant refused to leave the office. He said until office hours on Tuesday, he had not received any suspension order, but the order was handed over to him on Wednesday morning.

“The order cannot be accepted. As per the bye laws 21.2.13, only the board can suspend me on prior permission from the registrar and NDDB. And this suspension order is not in accordance to the bye laws,” Sawant said.