Labour minister pitches for separate ministry for cooperatives

The Maharashtra government will set up a separate office to deal with issues concerning cooperative housing societies to protect the interest of residents, state cooperation minister Subhash Deshmukh said today.

"The new chapter (technical term for such an office) will be ready in 3-4 months. Some rules governing cooperative housing societies would be redefined and some new ones enacted to protect the interest of residents. The state will also allocate separate staff and machinery for this," the minister informed.

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'Around 1 lakh cooperative housing societies in the state'

A senior Cooperation department official said that there are around one lakh cooperative housing societies in the state, with around two crore people living in them, and dealing with their issues was creating problems with the audit and functioning of other cooperative societies which number about 2.5 lakh statewide. These include sugar and banking cooperatives, the official informed.

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"A separate office will expedite issues related to housing societies like registration, deemed conveyance, redevelopment, land ownership and the like," he explained. He informed that such cooperative housing societies were getting registered in large numbers in Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Nashik and Aurangabad.

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"The state government has held around eight meetings in the past one year to finalize the structure and scope of the office. Some amendments, restricted to housing societies, will be made to the Maharashtra Cooperative Societies Act, 1960," he said.

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