05 August,2022 08:54 AM IST | Mumbai | Vinod Kumar Menon
As part of the survey, officials will look into registered cooperative societies including cooperative credit societies. Representation pic
Experts welcomed the cooperative commissioner's decision to conduct a survey of cooperative societies and liquidate those found defunct, but MahaSEWA said efforts should be made to carry out the survey through an online registration process which will leave officers with more time to act against defunct societies.
Commissioner of Cooperative and Registrar of Cooperative Society Anil Kawade told mid-day, "At present we do not have exact data on functional and non-functional cooperative societies (other than housing societies) which are registered with us across the state. Once we have this data, we will be able to carry out the next course of action, adhering to the process of law before carrying out the liquidation of defunct societies. Our aim is to strengthen the cooperative moment, and bring in the much-required transparency and good governance in cooperative department and its functioning."
He added, "The month-long survey will start on August 15, and after the same is done, the filtering process will begin to verify if the cooperative society is functioning for the fulfilment of the objectives for which it is registered."
Advocate Shreeprasad Parab, expert director, State Housing Federation, said, "This is a very crucial survey as it will help find the cooperative societies which availed the temporary benefits announced by the government but remained only on paper. And hence as a state housing federation, we have already mooted the need for mandatory digitisation of the entire cooperative department, connected to each and every registered cooperative society."
"This will also prevent dummy voters, who would exercise their voting right in large cooperative elections viz banking, credit cooperative societies, thereby violating the principles of democratic setup of the cooperative sector. With this survey cooperative officials will be able to deregister defunct societies, thereby focusing on the functioning and dispute redressals of the active ones," he added.
CA Ramesh Prabhu, founder chairman of MahaSEWA, said, "Online registration of all cooperative societies was made mandatory in 2014 which was operational till 2018 but stopped thereafter. We are of the view that if the online portal is made functional, department officials will be able to concentrate on defunct societies. The survey will require time and energy to collect information from all societies. We also think liquidation of societies, which is a lengthy process, should be the last option as there may be societies that are functional but the registrar may not receive the survey information as the survey will be done in a short period. This will put great hardship on societies.
"The officers concerned should be directed to conduct inspection of the societies under section 89A of the MCS Act, 1960 to verify whether the societies are functioning as per the provisions of MCS Act, 1960, MCS Rules, 1961 and the registered bye laws of the society," said Prabhu.
When asked about experts' demand for digitisation of cooperative department, the cooperative commissioner said, "We are working towards digitisation of the cooperative department and are in dialogue with the state government-run MahaIT team, who will soon be working towards setting up an user-friendly system in place which will provide both intranet and internet services to both internal staff and registered cooperative members."
