The pro-Congress Sahakarna Janathipathya Vedi has accused the Centre and State governments of competing with each other to wreck Kerala’s vibrant cooperative movement. In a statement here, Vedi chairman Karakulam Krishna Pillai alleged that the government’s move to establish a Kerala Bank was nothing but a devious strategy to control the deposits in the cooperative sector in order to meet its ways and means requirements.
This would only serve to deprive the agriculture sector of funds and other benefits to be given to farmers. The demonetisation had put a great strain on the cooperative institutions and instead of taking steps to energising these institutions, the government was adopting policies that would only worsen the crisis, he said.
The Congress party had opposed the decision to disband the director boards of district cooperative banks. The government was adopting measures intended to divide the cooperative movement rather than introducing innovative steps to secure the future of cooperative institutions. He said the Vedi would organise a Secretariat march on May 16, the day when the Assembly is slated to take up for consideration the cooperative amendment Bill, intended to ratify some of the decisions the government had taken in recent days.
