Cong's Parmar wins polls at Amul Dairy

Ramsinh Parmar re-elected as chairman of Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union (Amul Dairy)

Ramsinh Parmar, chairman of Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union (popularly known as Amul Dairy), has managed to retain his post for another five-year term. Parmar is a Congress legislator from Thasra.

Amul Dairy had gone for the election of the new board of directors on Tuesday, and results were declared on Wednesday. In all 1,000 voters had cast their votes. B S Patel, deputy collector of Anand, who was the returning officer for the elections, confirmed the development.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had fielded Vipul Patel, who is the chairman of a Nadiad Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) against Parmar, who has been a director at the Amul Dairy’s Board since 1974.

An upbeat Parmar said he would focus on expanding the presence of Amul Dairy in other geographies in the next five years. He added the dairy’s turnover in 2014-15 was around Rs 4,000 crore, up from Rs 3,441 crore in 2013-14. “I would continue to work for the dairy farmers in the region and see to it that they get good procurement price for milk. As such, we are present across Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and had also expanded to the US, recently. We are setting up a new cattlefeed plant at Kapadvanj in Gujarat,” he told Business Standard.

The elections had seen a 99 per cent turnout, and the polling had been peacefully. A total of 28 candidates were in the fray for 11 posts of board of directors at the union. Congress-backed candidates contested under the banner of “Amul Vikas Panel” (development), while those backed by the BJP fought under the “Amul Parivartan Panel” (change).

Representatives of each milk society vote to elect representatives from 13 blocks. Each block has about a hundred milk societies. “Out of the 13 blocks, Parmar was already elected uncontested from Thasra block and Vipul Patel from Matar block,” Patel said.

Amul Dairy has a total milk processing capacity of about 4.5 million litres a day.

Average milk collection is around 1.8 million litres per day.

Amul Dairy roughly has over 680,962 producer members from 1,206 village dairy cooperative socities.