Baroda Dairy’s chairman, VC to be elected today

Vadodara: All eyes in the political circles are set on the election for top two posts of the Baroda Dairy scheduled to be held on Monday. Election for the posts of chairman and vice-chairman for a 2.5-year term were earlier scheduled on June 26. But the polls got postponed after a series of twists and turns with a majority of board members in mood to rebel against the official mandate issued by the ruling BJP. Eventually, amid allegations of political interference, the polls got postponed as the returning officer did not turn up for the meeting. Countdown to Monday’s elections has witnessed hectic parleys with attempts being made to quell the rebellion. After the group led by dairy’s former chairman Dinesh Patel alias Dinu Mama on Monday last threatened to go against party’s mandate and former vice-chairman G B Solanki declaring that he would be contesting for the post of chairman, BJP’s top brass was in a fix. The group of board of directors led by Dinu Mama and G B Solanki had claimed support of 11 out of 13 directors except sitting chairman and president of BJP’s district unit Satish Patel and sitting vice-chairman Kripal Singh Maharaul. On Sunday, 10 out of 13 board members met the state BJP chief C R Paatil at the circuit house in Vadodara in presence of other leaders. Interestingly, Savli BJP MLA Ketan Inamdar, who earlier had made serious allegations against the board of directors of Baroda Dairy, had already arrived at the circuit house before Paatil reached there. Inamdar had raked up serious allegations against the dairy’s board of directors, both Dinu Mama and G B Solanki had resigned from their posts after which the posts had fallen vacant. It was in April that Satish Patel and Maharaul were elected uncontested as dairy’s chairman and vice-chairman, respectively. On Sunday, except Satish Patel and two Congress backed directors, all other board members including Maharaul attended the meeting with Paatil. On Saturday, too, BJP leaders had held a series of meetings with board members of the dairy to take “sense”.Talking to media persons, Inamdar said that he was confident that all the board members will accept party’s mandate on Monday.