Amit Shah chaired the first meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee of the Ministry of Cooperation on ‘Initiatives taken and currently being taken to strengthen cooperative societies’ in New Delhi. The meeting was attended by Union Ministers of State for Cooperation, Shri Krishan Pal and Shri Murlidhar Mohol, Members of the Committee, Secretary, Ministry of Cooperation and senior officers of the Ministry. The committee discussed various issues related to the initiatives taken by the Ministry of Cooperation since its establishment and the current efforts being made to empower cooperative societies.
Addressing the meeting, Shri Amit Shah, the Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation, said that Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi established a separate Ministry of Cooperation for the welfare of farmers and rural areas across the country and gave the mantra of "Sahkar Se Samriddhi”. He mentioned that the Modi government believes that both employment generation and prosperity of rural areas are possible through cooperation.
Amit Shah said that the cooperative movement was strong in the country for a few years after independence, but later it got weakened in most states. He mentioned that after the formation of the Ministry of Cooperation at the Centre, the first task was to create a database of Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) in collaboration with the states and initiate the process of registering two lakh PACS. He said that the work to develop the National Cooperative Database is almost complete, and now, information about cooperative societies across the country, categorized by region, is available at one click. Shri Shah said that steps have been taken for the computerization of PACS. He added that in the coming times, there will not be a single panchayat in the country where PACS will not be available.