Tamil Nadu bins plan to cut tenure of co-ops from 5 to 3 years

CHENNAI: In line with the practice followed across the country, the state government has decided to maintain the tenure of cooperative societies at five years and has decided to withdraw a bill that seeks to reduce the term of directors of cooperative societies to three years.    

The Tamil Nadu law department has initiated steps to withdraw the bill passed by the assembly in January this year to amend the Tamil Nadu Cooperative Societies Act of 1983. The bill has been pending with the governor for assent for the past 11 months.

The Tamil Nadu State Co-operative Societies Election Commission has also asked the registrars of cooperative department, Aavin, agriculture, handlooms & textiles and others to start the preparatory work for conducting elections for societies whose tenure will end by April next year.

The state has 26,754 registered cooperative societies under 15 departments with 2.4 lakh members. Of this, at least 21,000 societies are active, according to official data.

Normally, supporters of ruling parties mostly get elected to the board of directors of cooperative societies. The boards will then elect chairpersons and vice-chairpersons for village and district-level posts.

Law and cooperation department sources said the five-year term of over 18,468 cooperative societies, for which elections were held between March and September of 2018, will be over by next year. “Legal procedures to withdraw the bill sent to the governor have been initiated by the law department. After the bill was passed in January, questions were raised about the need to reduce term of cooperative societies from five years to three years,” an official said.

As the terms of the current cooperative societies will end in the next few months, the government has decided to withdraw the bill, the official said. Last year, while tabling the bill in the assembly, the DMK government attributed its decision to malpractices in cooperative societies including large-scale misappropriation of funds and issuance of fake jewels loans, among others.The opposition AIADMK, however, termed it as vendetta politics as the bill was introduced only to dissolve cooperative societies that were elected under the previous regime.

On Friday, A Shanmugasundaram, registrar of cooperative societies, sent a circular to joint registrars asking the officials to send the list of societies whose tenure will end by next April for conducting elections. Of the 18,468 cooperative societies, 4,684 were elected on April 3, 2018, and their term will end on April 2, 2023. Additionally, elections will also be conducted for newly formed societies.