Mumbai: The board of Gokul, Maharashtra’s largest milk-producing co-operative, saw a Mahayuti-backed member being elected its chairperson on Tuesday (November 10), days after the Maharashtra government allowed four nominated members to vote, thereby upturning a Congress-led panel’s victory in elections held last month.Former legislator from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Rajesh Patil, representing a Mahayuti-backed panel, was elected as the chairperson, defeating the Congress-led panel’s Shashikant Patil-Chuyekar.Rajesh Patil bagged 16 votes, whereas Patil-Chuyekar bagged 13 votes.The dairy is Maharashtra’s largest milk co-operative – with a turnover of over Rs 4,100 crore – and works with more than 8,400 milk societies and nearly five lakh milk producers in the crucial western Maharashtra region. Control over Gokul allows political leaders to be in direct contact with lakhs of families, and also allows them to wield considerable financial influence over their lives through the disbursal of payments to them.The election to the 25-member board of directors was held on October 19 and saw the Congress-led panel, led by Congress MLC Satej Patil, bagging a narrow victory over the Mahayuti panel, bagging 13 votes to the Mahayuti panel’s 12 votes.However, two weeks after the elections, the Devendra Fadnavis government on November 4 promulgated an ordinance nominating five members to the boards of major co-operative institutions like Gokul and giving four of the five nominated members the right to vote in the chairperson’s election.The move garnered heavy flak – Congress leader and Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi said the move was a “theft of milk producers’ votes”, whereas Cockroach Janta Party chief Abhijeet Dipke alleged that Fadnavis was attempting a “hostile takeover” of Gokul. Satej Patil criticised the decision and said it would make elections redundant.“If the government’s policy is to disregard the people’s mandate and take decisions according to its own wishes, then there is no point in holding elections. It would be better to cancel all elections, appoint government nominees and let them run sugar factories, spinning mills and municipal corporations,” he had said.Satej Patil had also organised a protest in Kolhapur on Monday (November 9), which saw tens of thousands of protesters march on the streets of the city.The move was opposed even by former Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai who, in a legal opinion offered to the Congress-led panel’s advocate Shrikrishna Ganbavale, reportedly said such a move was not “sustainable on the ground that such an action would be hit by the doctrine of manifest arbitrariness and would amount to colourable exercise of powers.”Ganbavale submitted Gavai’s opinion to the Fadnavis government. The next day, the Fadnavis government approved an amendment in the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act, allowing government-nominated and designated directors to vote in the elections of a chairperson or other members.This move tilted the scales in favour of the Mahayuti panel’s candidate and, as was widely expected, Tuesday’s election saw Patil bagging 16 votes and registering a victory, even though the original election results had seen the Congress-panel emerging victorious.Fadnavis has defended the amendment, pointing to the lack of a quorum in a meeting held on October 29 to elect a chairperson. The Mahayuti directors had abstained from the meeting, thereby preventing the meeting from reaching the quorum of 14 directors.“One side had won 13 seats and the other 12 seats. Therefore, the quorum required for the meeting was not being met. The meeting had to be cancelled twice due to a lack of quorum. If the meeting had been cancelled for the third time due to a lack of quorum, the election itself would have been cancelled. That is why the government took the decision,” Fadnavis had posted on ‘X’, in response to Gandhi’s criticism.However, Congress leaders have rejected Fadnavis’s explanation, pointing to the fact that the Mahayuti directors could have been asked to remain present for the board meeting, instead of abstaining. This, they said, would have ensured adequate quorum for the meeting to take place.Later this month, the Bombay high court is slated to hear a petition by the Congress-led panel for quashing the controversial amendment. In its hearing on November 9, the court had refused to stay the election.However, it had said that the results of the elections would be subject to the court’s final decision on the matter and had asked Gokul officials to keep the ballots of the elected directors and the government-nominated directors separate.Why Gokul is keyGokul dairy is the state’s largest milk producers’ co-operative, and collects over 17 lakh litres of milk from nearly five lakh milk producers every day. While most of the producers are based in and around Kolhapur district, Gokul’s distribution is spread across Maharashtra, as well as parts of Karnataka and Goa.Controlling Gokul allows political leaders to exert influence over lakhs of families across western Maharashtra. The region has traditionally been a stronghold of the Congress and the NCP. Control over Gokul will also allow the BJP to fledge its wings in the region.