Sahakar Bharati on Saturday demanded that the proposed amendments to the Karnataka Souharda Sahakari Act, 1997, be scrapped. They alleged that the amendments allowed for unnecessary bureaucratic interference in the affairs of cooperative societies.
Addressing presspersons Sahakar Bharati vice-president, Konkodi Padmanabha, said that the changes were anti-Constitution and took away the autonomy of cooperative societies.
He said that the changes allowed the Registrar of Cooperative Societies to investigate complaints against cooperatives instead of the democratically elected Karnataka State Souharda Federal Cooperative Ltd.
The organisation would also petition the Central government to withdraw the amendments.
Sahakar Bharati national president, Sathish Marathe, said that the resolutions would be presented as memorandum to the ministers concerned in the central and State governments.
Among the subjects for the Central Government were the scrapping of the proposal to impose income tax on cooperatives in the Direct Tax Code Bill; introduction of Micro Finance Development and Regulatory Bill to regulate micro-finance institutions that “extort” people with high interest rates; RBI (Reserve bank of India) norms for setting up of Urban Cooperative Banks; scrapping of the Prakash Bakshi report that recommends doing away with PACS; and to promote public cooperatives in implementation and management of services such as Transport, Water, Electricity and Health institutions.
The meeting, which will be held till Sunday at the Gopalakrishna temple in Shaktinagar, will see participation by about 80 delegates from all eight zones of the Sahakar Bharati, which is a federation of cooperative banks.
