The Congress will use the ‘Nandini’ episode as a prominent campaign plank during the Karnataka election, saying it will expose the BJP’s “sinister agenda” and “not allow a time to come" when the BJP can raise 'One Nation, One Milk' slogan.
The party is designing a campaign around the Modi government's "brazen move" for an "enforced cooperation" between Amul and Karnataka Milk Federation brand Nandini and how the latter is being “compelled” to “act against its commercial interests is only a step towards the intended goal where all dairy unions become a political arm of the BJP".
On Wednesday, Congress issued a statement promising to “strongly oppose” the efforts of Union Cooperation and Home Minister Amit Shah and the BJP to centralise control of cooperatives. The party “will not allow the time to come when the BJP may raise the slogan of 'One Nation, One Milk'.”
The party leaders have already started a campaign around ‘Nandini’ over Shah’s push on Nandini to cooperate with Amul, which also wants to expand its market in the state.
The Karnataka Congress is also drawing a parallel with the merger of Karnataka-based Vijaya Bank, one of the most successful public sector banks, with loss-making Bank of Baroda. The State Bank of Mysore has been merged with SBI and Corporation Bank merged with Union Bank, leaving only one public sector bank with its head office in Karnataka.
“Decisions will not be made in Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chennai or Pune, but in Delhi by Amit Shah, the Minister of Cooperation. This will disempower dairy farmers and will ultimately threaten their incomes and livelihoods. This pattern has been seen before…Decisions about the development of Karnataka previously made in Mysuru, Mangaluru and Bengaluru are now being made in Baroda and Mumbai," Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh said in the statement.
He said that the Congress had helped nurture a decentralised vision of cooperatives over decades, empowering and ensuring autonomy of crores of dairy farmers, but in "sharp contrast", Shah imagines a small collection of centralised cooperatives under his "direct command and control".
This is why Shah wishes that “Amul will merge with five other cooperative societies to form a multi-state cooperative society" involving two lakh rural diaries, he said, adding the BJP wants to establish its "total control" ignoring that the Constitution clearly demarcated cooperative societies as a state subject.
Sharing the chronology of events, which included the setting up of the Ministry of Cooperation in July 2021 and Shah being given its charge as well as his statement that Amul will merge with five other cooperative societies, he said, "as the chronology shows, Prime Minister Modi and his government are following their usual practice. They are establishing their total control, ignoring the Constitution which clearly demarcates cooperative societies as a state subject."
Ramesh said Nandini, Amul, and other cooperatives like OMFED, Mother Dairy, Vijaya and Aavin, empower farmers and help them prosper. KMF is a federation of 14,000 cooperative societies organised into 14 unions and its 24 lakh members earn over Rs 17 crore a day.