The BJP’s Anand district unit president Vipul Patel was elected Tuesday as the new chairman of the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union Limited—the oldest milk cooperative of Gujarat popularly known as Amul Dairy. Patel’s election brings to an end the reign of Ramsinh Parmar, an OBC, who held the post of the cooperative’s chairman for almost 20 years.

Kanti Sodha Parmar, who quit the Congress and joined the BJP on January 30, has been elected as the vice-chairman of the cooperative. Kanti Sodha replaces Rajendrasinh Parmar of the Congress party who had held the post of its vice-chairman since 2006.

While Vipul Patel heads a district cooperative bank and an Agricultural Produce & Livestock Market Committee (APMC) in the state’s Anand district, Kanti Sodha had won the 2017 Assembly elections from the Anand seat on a Congress ticket. In the 2022 polls, he lost to his BJP rival—Yogendra Parmar who is the ousted Amul Dairy chairman Ramsinh Parmar’s son—from the same seat.

The elections which are being held after a gap of 2.5 years were a straightforward affair after five of the directors, in the 15-member Board, quit the Congress and joined BJP in the last two weeks. Kanti Sodha was the first to leave. Thereafter, Gautam Chauhan, Sita Chandu Parmar, Sharda Patel, and Ghela Mansinh Zala all joined the BJP.

Currently, there are only two Congress party leaders left on the Board of Directors—including Rajendrasinh Parmar and Sanjay Patel.

“Ramsinh Parmar was instrumental in helping the directors aligned with the Congress party to shift over to the BJP. However, when the party’s mandate for the elections came today, it was not in Ramsinh’s favour,” a source in the Kaira cooperative told The Indian Express.

Ramsinh Parmar, who quit the Congress and joined the BJP in 2017, had continued to hold the post of chairman. In the 2022 Assembly elections in Gujarat, the BJP had given his son Yogendra a ticket to contest from the Thasra constituency. Parmar won the elections against Congress candidate Kanti Sodha Parmar.

Source : The Indian Express Feb 14th 2023