Jairam Patel Made Mmcb Chairman

The central registrar of cooperative societies (RCS) has constituted a five-member board of administrators for the Madhavpura Mercantile Cooperative Bank (MMCB) under Section 48 of the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act, 1984.

While Jairam Patel, chairman of Gujarat State Cooperative Bank (GSCB) has been appointed as the board chairman, the other four members are Gujarat Urban Cooperative Bank Federation chairman Atmaram Patel, Ahmedabad City and District Cooperative Banks Association president R S Patel, chief director (cooperation) J P Meena as the central government nominee and the current MMCB acting chief executive officer R M Shah.

This move by the RCS is being viewed as a well-calculated step as Patel is a senior cooperative sector leader of Gujarat. Having him as the chairman of MMCB's would make it easy to mobilise the Rs 800 crore bailout package cleared by the Centre on June 20.

The funds for the bailout is to be pooled in by cooperative banks based in Gujarat. There are around 350 urban cooperative banks, 19 district cooperative banks and one apex district cooperative bank in Gujarat.