Gokul row fuels Opposition's 'vote chori' campaign against Maharashtra govt

Mumbai: A local dairy boardroom deadlock has snowballed into a major statewide political battlefront. Opposition parties have slammed the state government's move to appoint directors to the Gokul Milk Cooperative which they claim is a backdoor coup to overturn the democratic mandate of the five lakh dairy farmers who voted. With this, the UBT Sena, NCP(SP) have extended support to the Congress against the Mahayuti government's controversial decision to alter the voting structure of the Gokul Milk Cooperative.

This has also lent a second wind to the Opposition's 'vote chori' (vote theft) campaign. Congress leader Satej Patil, whose panel won the Gokul Cooperative elections by winning 13 of the 25 seats on Thursday, said the state government was not just engaged in vote theft but 'power theft'. "Elections were held and people voted but when you don't get power, you try to change the result to get power," Patil said.

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Arguing how the state government's decision was legally flawed, he said, "The move to have four directors has come up after the elections were held and the results came. This means it was done with retrospective effect. How can you pass such a law? They have not issued an ordinance as yet to prevent us from approaching courts."

Patil argued that the state government move was a dangerous precedent as they could henceforth change the constitution of all boards once the elections were over. "We will oppose it legally and on the streets. This is an attempt to hand over Gokul to Gujarat's Amul. The Centre's game plan is to only have two brands in the country -- Amul and Mother Dairy -- managed by NDDB," Patil alleged.

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The Congress leader blamed senior NCP minister Hasan Mushrif and BJP minister Chandrakant Patil for the move. Mushrif, whose panel lost the polls, argued that the move to appoint four directors was to ensure that there was a quorum in the Gokul cooperative. "There was a deadlock and once it was removed (with the help of four government-appointed directors) then a chairman would be elected," Mushrif said. The Congress leader argued that there was no 'deadlock' and that if the 12 members of the Mahayuti alliance would have been present for the meeting to elect the chairman then the quorum would have been achieved.