Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah on Thursday inaugurated the computerization of Uttarakhand’s multipurpose Primary Agricultural Credit Cooperative Societies (PACS), joint cooperative farming, Jan Suvidha Kendras and Jan Aushadhi Kendras in Haridwar.
Many dignitaries including Chief Minister of Uttarakhand Pushkar Singh Dhami were present on the occasion.
The Minister said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on 30 October, 2021, for the first time in the country, the work of computerization of Primary Agricultural Credit Society (PACS) started in Uttarakhand and today, computerization of all the 670 PACS of the state has been completed.
He said that model bylaws for MPACS were sent to state governments some time ago and the work of establishment of 95 MPACS in Uttarakhand has already been completed. Shah said that along with this, Uttarakhand is the first state to start 95 Jan Aushadhi Kendras and Jan Suvidha Kendras under Cooperative Societies.
The Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi formed a separate Ministry of Cooperation in the country. He took many new initiatives through the mantra of “Sehkar Se Samridhi.”
The government is creating a National Cooperative University and the National Cooperative Policy and Cooperative Database, he said. Along with this, Multi-state Cooperative Societies have been formed for seeds, marketing of organic farming and export of farmers’ produce.
Through the Ministry of Cooperation, computerization of all the 65,000 active PACS in the country has started. He said that many facilities, including 307 District Cooperative Banks, have also been computerized.
Home Minister Shah said by completing the computerization of 307 cooperative bank branches and 670 MPACS today, the Uttarakhand government has achieved the first place in the cooperative sector in the country. He said that computerization would bring complete transparency in the system and audits would be done online which would improve the financial discipline of PACS.
Shah said that 95 Jan Suvidha Kendra will deliver more than 300 schemes of the Central Government and the state government directly to villages. He added that about 50 to 90 per cent of cheap medicines would be available to people through cooperative Jan Aushadhi Kendras. He said that the model of integrated collective cooperative farming has been launched today in 95 development blocks of Uttarakhand.
Mr Shah said that on the initiative of the Ministry of Cooperation, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the return of money to about 10 crore depositors who had deposited their money in four cooperative societies of the Sahara Group.
He said that with this historic decision, all investors of the Sahara Group would get their money back. Mr Shah said that all the investors of Sahara Group can send their applications to the Central Registrar so that after verification they can get their money back in 3-4 month.