CHENNAI: Following complaints of widespread malpractices in the 2018 cooperative society elections, the state government has decided to streamline the election process by linking the Aadhaar and ration cards of all cooperative society members with the voter's list.
The exercise related to the purification of the voter's list began on March 1 this year and will continue until October 31. Only after that, the notification for electing board directors of nearly 21,000 cooperative societies will be issued.
According to official sources, the boards will then elect chairpersons and vice chairpersons at the village and district level. The reforms in the election process assume significance as cooperative societies are largely unregulated and rely heavily on manual processes without computerisation. Conventionally members with allegiance to the ruling government were elected to the positions of the board of directors and other posts.
Alleging various violations in the conduct of the 2018 elections, a total of 1,706 cases have been filed at the Madras High Court, and 5,544 complaints lodged with the Tamil Nadu State co-operative societies election commission. Most of the complaints pertain to violations in the preparation of the voters’ list, such as failure to remove deceased and ineligible voters, non-publication of the list, duplicate entries and a few others.
The existing rules provide hardly one or two days to carry out voters list preparation works from the date of notification. Therefore, the government amended the Tamil Nadu Co-operative Societies Rules of 1988, enhancing the interval between the initial release of the voters’ list and the final publication of the rolls up to six months, said a recent directive issued by A Shanmugasundaram, registrar of cooperative societies.
The zonal level officials will have 15 to 30 days for each stage, which includes the removal of deceased voters from the list and updating the Aadhaar and ration card numbers of society members.
“The competent authorities should call for a general council meeting of cooperative societies, issuing a notice 30 days in advance. The voters’ list should be tabled before the meeting for approval, and only then should the final voters’ list be released,” added Shanmugasundaram.
Going by the practice followed by the Election Commission of India, the voter's list for each cooperative society shall be released in January of every year and claims and objections will be accepted for 30 days after the release of the voter's list, said the order.
Official data show that Tamil Nadu has a total of 26,754 registered cooperative societies in 15 departments, including cooperation, Aavin, horticulture, handlooms and textiles, agriculture and others, of which around 21,000 are expected to be functional with 2.4 lakh members. Elections for 18,468 societies were conducted between April and September 2018, and the tenure of 4,684 societies ended on April 2, 2023.