Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah urged cooperative banks to come forward for the overall progress of the country. Said that at present there are cooperative banks in three hundred districts of the country. It has to be increased by 50 percent before going to the elections. Amit Shah was addressing the diamond jubilee celebrations of the National State Cooperative Banks Federation Limited and the national meeting of rural cooperative banks at Bharat Mandapam on Tuesday.
The Union Minister said that cooperative banks will be established in all the districts of the country only when two lakh new Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) are formed. Meaning, one PACS will be formed in each Panchayat. Be it the milk production primary committee or the committee related to fishermen. According to the nature of the villages, such committees will be formed.
He said that Rs 25 crore will be spent on computerizing PACS. With this, all the work from registration to audit will start happening online. PACS is the soul of State Cooperative Banks and District Cooperative Banks. If cooperative banks are to be strengthened then PACS will have to be strengthened. For this, packs are being prepared using new technology.
Amit Shah said that cooperative banks are continuously being modernized and developing their working capacity. The cooperative system has breathed new life into the farmers and agriculture of the entire country. Cooperative banks have played a big role in everything from water management to agriculture and strengthening villages. Our country is moving from cooperation to prosperity and from prosperity to completeness. This is also the purpose of establishing a separate ministry.
The Cooperation Minister said that the government aims to achieve the third economy by the year 2027. The next five years are going to be important for the cooperative sector. The government wants equal development of the poor, Dalits, tribals and women. The government has also shown it. Institutions like IFFCO, KRIBHCO and Amul have made great achievements in the cooperative sector.
Amit Shah also mentioned the responsibility of PACS and said that PACS and cooperative banks should also come forward to strengthen the spirit of cooperation. Every problem of the village should be solved by Pax. Every problem of the district should be of the Co-operative Bank and every problem of the state should be of the State Co-operative Bank. Co-operation will also have to earn public trust. Transparency is necessary for this. State and district cooperative banks will also have to start transparent behavior. If this does not happen then we cannot succeed in our objective.
A high-level committee headed by Union Home Minister Amit Shah has approved Rs 1,000 crore for various disaster mitigation and capacity building projects in 15 states. According to an official statement, the committee also approved another project for training and capacity building of civil defense volunteers in all states and union territories at a total outlay of Rs 115.67 crore.
According to an official statement, Rs 139 crore each for Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, Rs 100 crore for Maharashtra, Rs 72 crore each for Karnataka and Kerala, Rs 50 crore each for Tamil Nadu and Bengal and eight north-eastern states. A sum of Rs 378 crore was sanctioned for Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura.
The committee, comprising the Union Finance and Agriculture Ministers and the Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog, considered the proposal for funding from the National Disaster Mitigation Fund (NDMF) to reduce the risk of landslides in 15 states. The proposal also noted inadequate preparedness and capacity building for training and capacity building of civil defense volunteers in all states and union territories with National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) funding, it said.