Maharashtra: Mahayuti's Rajesh Patil elected Gokul Dairy chairman

NCP leader and former MLA Rajesh Patil, a candidate of the ruling Mahayuti, on Tuesday, 10 November, won the highly controversial election to the post of chairman of Gokul Dairy by polling 16 out of 29 votes.

Patil’s rival Shashikant Chuyekar of the Rajarshi Shahu Shetkari Samvichari Aghadi, got 13 votes, according to BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Dhananjay Mahadik.

The Opposition has slammed the BJP-led Maharashtra government for nominating four additional directors with voting rights after a panel backed by Congress MLC Satej Patil won a narrow 13-12 majority in the last month's election to the Kolhapur District Cooperative Milk Producers Union, popularly known as Gokul Dairy.

The election to Gokul Dairy, which has an annual turnover of more than Rs 4,000 crore, had become a prestige battle between the ruling alliance and the Opposition.

The Bombay High Court had on Monday refused to grant a stay to the government's ordinance conferring voting rights on the four nominated directors, even as Opposition leaders and dairy farmers staged a massive protest in Kolhapur alleging a "blatant assault on cooperative democracy".

The Aurangabad bench of the High Court ruled that the four nominated directors could participate in the election, but their votes be kept in a separate ballot box.

After the election, Patil said he would work with all 25 elected directors, four government-nominated directors and two co-opted directors during his one-year tenure to safeguard the interests of milk producers, the cooperative and its employees.

Mahadik said the decision to elect an NCP leader as chairman for the first year was taken by consensus, while the arrangement for the subsequent year would be decided through discussions.

A deadlock had emerged after 12 directors stayed away from meetings, raising the possibility of an administrator being appointed if the required quorum was not achieved, Mahadik said, crediting Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and both Deputy Chief Ministers with resolving the issue by appointing four additional directors.

State Medical Education Minister Hasan Mushrif congratulated Patil on his victory. The NCP leader too defended the controversial appointment of four nominated directors, said it helped resolve the quorum-related deadlock.

Defeated candidate Chuyekar claimed that he secured the votes of 13 out of the 25 elected directors, and the chairman's election was won by Patil through the use of force rather than democratic means.

Maharashtra minister Chandrakant Patil said the victory would put an end to the allegations levelled against the Mahayuti alliance and its leaders over the past 15 days.

Congress leader Satej Patil had on Monday alleged that the decision to grant voting rights to the four nominated directors was a conspiracy hatched by Chandrakant Patil and Mushrif.