No proposal to merge KMF with Amul, says Coop Minister

Scotching rumours surrounding the future of the home-grown Nandini dairy brand, Cooperation Minister S T Somashekhar on Monday said that there was no proposal to have it merged with Amul at the moment.

Social media went berserk following Union Cooperation Minister Amit Shah's statement that Amul and five other cooperatives would be merged to form a multi-state cooperative society for certification of natural products.

Shah said this at the 70th plenary meeting of the North Eastern Council in Guwahati, Assam, on Sunday.

"I attended a conclave of cooperation ministers last month presided over by Shah himself. We discussed many issues, but this one never cropped up," Somashekhar told DH.

When specifically asked about Shah’s statement, Somashekhar clarified that he was not aware of the context in which Shah made the statement and therefore, he would refrain from making any further comments.

Speculation over Amul's merger with the Karnataka Cooperative Milk Producers' Federation Ltd (KMF) was viewed with skepticism and several Twitter users called it an attempt to "finish off" the Nandini brand.

Kannada activist Arun Javagal tweeted that this could be an attempt to ensure Nandini is shut.

Responding to this, Krushika A V speculated that KMF would be merged with the Gujarat Cooperative Federation (which owns Amul brand). "Why centralisation of cooperative institutions? (sic)."

Meanwhile, retired agricultural business management professor Venkata Reddy told DH that forming multi-state cooperative units per se was not new to Karnataka, citing the example of the Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative Limited or CAMPCO founded in 1973.

"There is nothing wrong in Shah’s idea of merging Amul and five other co-operative societies and forming a big unit. It would be an economically intelligent move as it saves a lot of resources and earns more profits and scaling up of business would be an easy task," he explained.

A senior BJP leader told DH that forming a large MSU may make good business sense, but it would considerably reduce the clout of regional satraps whose political career rests only on cooperative institutions. "Cooperative institutions are the backbone of election funding and maneuvering in India. If in case the MSU is formed then Karnataka may have to merge several district milk unions into a single entity and in turn this would result in reducing several political appointments," the leader said, adding that it would prove detrimental to the party’s prospects.