Amul prefers Congress to saffron party

The Congress in Gujarat on Wednesday got a boost in a state where it has been struggling to clutch at straws for survival in the last two decades when its legislator from Thasra Assembly constituency, Ramsinh Parmar, was able to retain his hold over the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union – popularly known as Amul Dairy.

It was Amul Dairy that led to the formation of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation in 1946, with two village dairy cooperative societies and 247 litres of milk.

Today GCMMF is the epitome of the milk cooperative movement, with 17 district milk cooperative unions and over 3 million milk producers from Gujarat as its members.

While the GCMMF manages brand Amul and hopes to achieve a turnover of Rs 20,000 crore, brand Amul is owned originally by the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers Union Ltd.
The election was on a relatively smaller scale, with less than 1,000 voters.

However, it assumed great significance due to the fact that it involved getting the rights to manage a dairy with a turnover of about Rs 4,000 crore.

Ramsinh Parmar, who is also the chairman of Amul Dairy, retained his hold over the Union with his candidates winning 10 of the 13 seats for which elections were held on Monday last. Only two Bharatiya Janata Party supported candidates could win, and an independent was successful too.

Ramsinh Parmar enjoyed the support of most of the 900 odd members.
To thwart any attempt by the BJP to wean away his supporters, Parmar apparently took the voters on a tour so that BJP could not contact them. The voters were brought back just in time before polling.

Kheda district is the last bastion of the Congress among Gujarat’s dairy cooperative unions, with the BJP controlling the remaining 16 dairy cooperatives and its chairmanship of the GCMMF.

Congratulating the victorious Congress candidates of Amul Dairy, Ahmed Patel, political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, said in a statement that the victory was a befitting reply by milk producers and milk unions to BJP administrators who tried to use administrative machinery and police threats against voters.