Gokul power tussle sparks Mahayuti rift

Mumbai: Even as the ruling Mahayuti alliance and Congress leader Satej Patil clashed fiercely over the administrative control of the Gokul cooperative dairy board in Kolhapur and the state government attempts to capture the institution by appointing government nominees with voting rights after Patil's faction secured a clear electoral majority, the move has also caused a rift within the Mahayuti alliance.

The Rajarshi Shahu Shetkari Samvichari Aghadi, led by Patil, won 13 of the 25 seats in the October 19 elections to the Kolhapur District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union, popularly known as Gokul. The Mahayuti-backed panel won 12 seats, in a setback to the BJP-led ruling alliance.

The Kolhapur District Cooperative Milk Producers Association, popularly known as Gokul, operates as a massive economic and political powerhouse in western Maharashtra, making its control a matter of immense prestige.

With an annual turnover of over Rs 4,000 crore, Gokul is associated with nearly five lakh milk producers and operates through a network of more than 8,000 primary dairy societies spread across around 1,800 villages in and around Kolhapur. Its milk procurement and distribution network extends beyond Kolhapur to Mumbai and other parts of western Maharashtra, making it a crucial link between rural dairy farmers and urban consumers.

Electoral Verdict

The current crisis erupted when the Mahayuti alliance, unable to digest its electoral defeat to the panel led by Congress MLC Satej alias Banti Patil, began utilizing administrative loopholes to alter the board's arithmetic.

Taking advantage of cooperative bylaws, 12 directors affiliated with the Mahayuti boycotted the recent meeting convened to elect the dairy board’s chairman, effectively stalling the democratic process.

The deadlock has now reached the judiciary, with the court scheduling a meeting for November 10 and instructing the directors to attend, though it has not been made mandatory for them.

Faced with these aggressive containment strategies, Satej Patil launched a scathing counterattack today by releasing an open letter to the media and the citizens of Maharashtra. In the letter, Patil accused the ruling Mahayuti coalition of blatantly undermining the democratic framework of cooperative institutions.

“People's mandate is being obstructed on technical grounds. What meaning does voting hold then?” Patil asked in the letter.

He raised a poignant question regarding the utility of conducting elections if the ruling dispensation intends to overturn the people's mandate through the backdoor appointment of government nominees equipped with voting rights.

Warning the state of the broader implications, Patil cautioned that the administrative subversion currently unfolding in Gokul sets a dangerous precedent that could soon be replicated to hijack any cooperative or local self-governing body across Maharashtra.

Internal Rebellion

However, the Mahayuti’s strategic maneuver to suppress the Congress has simultaneously ignited a severe internal rebellion within its own ranks. The state government's plan hinges on appointing specific individuals as government directors to artificially inflate its numbers on the board.

The names currently finalizing in the corridors of power include Navid Mushrif, son of senior NCP minister Hasan Mushrif, alongside former director Shaumika Mahadik who is also a former mayor of the city and wife of BJP MLA Amal Mahadik, a senior name in Cooperative movement in Kolhapur district Ashok Farakte, who is considered to be close to Mushrif and another NCP heavyweight A Y Patil.

The selection of these high-profile family members of established Mahayuti leaders has triggered intense disappointment among the Shiv Sena leaders in the state. They were expecting administrative opportunities on the Gokul board, but have now expressed their anger, realizing they have been sidelined to accommodate the NCP and BJP members.

Board Expansion

The political engineering reached a new peak with the surfacing of a letter written by Higher and Technical Education Minister Chandrakant Patil to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on October 16. The letter, which recently went viral on social media, requests the Chief Minister to amend the cooperative framework to increase the number of government-appointed directors from two to four, and institution-nominated directors from two to four.

He argued in the letter that this expansion would provide the cooperative with broader expert guidance and a more balanced democratic representation.

Political analysts and the opposition, however, view Chandrakant Patil's letter as a calculated blueprint for a bloodless coup. By artificially swelling the board with eight unelected, government-backed directors, the Mahayuti aims to mathematically neutralize the mandate of the 25 elected directors controlled by the Satej Patil faction.

The battle for Gokul has evolved from a local cooperative election into a high-stakes proxy war reflecting the broader political volatility in Maharashtra, exposing both the fragility of the Mahayuti's internal alliances and the vulnerability of democratic cooperative institutions to state interference.