Rajasthan: First State to fix minimum education qualification for cooperative body poll

Rajasthan has become the first State in the country to lay down the minimum educational qualifications for contesting elections to village cooperative societies and various other cooperative bodies.
In this regard, state government has amended State Cooperative Societies Rules, 2003. The new rules would benefit about 10,000 cooperative and agricultural credit societies. Moreover, the benefit of education will accrue to the societies as their management will go to expert hands.

Key Facts

The minimum educational qualification will be compulsory for the members of the Directorate of Board of the cooperatives to ensure the management is assigned to skilled hands. The required educational qualifications will range from Class V to Class VIII for election as members of governing boards of various cooperative societies.
The minimum qualifications for the primary committee members will be class VIII, for district-level committees, it will be class X and graduation for the state level committee. The elections to various posts in the societies after a certain level would be conducted through the State Cooperative Election Authority.
Rajasthan will be also the first state in the country to establish Recruitment Board by the Cooperative Committees, which will recruit personnel for the cooperative committees. This move will ensure more employment in the field of cooperatives. It will also ensure competent and talented personnel are selected in a transparent way.

Background

In October 2016, Rajasthan Government had enforced the Rajasthan Cooperative Society (Amendment) Act, 2016 for making minimum educational qualification mandatory for election of the cooperative committees in the state. The act mandated to frame rules to define minimum qualification. Prior to enforcing this act, state government had made minimum educational qualification mandatory in panchayat polls.

Month: Current Affairs - July, 2017