Thiruvananthapuram: The newly formed Kerala Bank is set to enter a new phase as a new governing council has taken charge. Gopi Kottamurikal, a member of the CPM state committee, has been elected as its first president.
Gopi is the representative of urban cooperative banks. M K Kannan who won from Thrissur is the vice president. Kannan reportedly faced a challenge from G Lalu, the representative from Kollam.
Kerala Bank, which came into existence with the amalgamation of district cooperative banks earlier this year, is formally known as the Kerala State Cooperative Bank Ltd.
Since the Malappuram district cooperative bank did not merge with the Kerala Bank, elections for the governing board were not held in that district.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the Bank will open up new opportunities for the people of the state and urged the Malappuram district cooperative bank also to join the initiative.
The members of the Board include the Secretary for Cooperation in the Department of Cooperation, the Registrar of Cooperative Societies, the Chief General Manager of NABARD (Kerala region) and the CEO of the Kerala Cooperative Bank. Besides, there will be two independent professional directors to be nominated by the government.
The voters comprised representatives of 1,557 primary agriculture credit cooperative societies and 51 urban banks in the state.
The 14 elected members took charge on Friday.
The two elected unopposed are E Ramesh Babu (Scheduled Caste) from Kozhikode, S Nirmala Devi (Woman) from Pathanamthitta and Pushpadas from Ernakulam.
The representatives of other districts are: S Shajahan (Thiruvananthapuram), M Sathyapalan (Alappuzha), K V Sasi (Idukki), A Prabhakaran (Palakkad), P Gagarin (Wayanad), Sabu Abraham (Kasargod) and K G Vasanthakumari (Kannur).
The Left Front had bagged all seats in the elections held to the State Cooperative Bank.
CPM members comprise 12 out of the 14 elected members of the governing council. CPI and Kerala Congress (Mani) have one member each -- G Lalu (Kollam) and K J Philip (Kottayam).
Karakulam Krishna Pillai, the chairman of the UDF-affiliated Cooperative Janadhipathya Vedi, said his organisation had boycotted the polls.
