The Centre has increased the upper limit of Sahara Co-operatives’ refund amount to ₹50,000 per person from ₹10,000 per person after disbursing about ₹500 crore, so far, out of the sanctioned amount of ₹5,000 crore.
A senior co-operation ministry official said on Wednesday that over 4.29 lakh depositors of four co-operative societies floated by the Sahara Group, through the CRCS-Sahara refund portal, have received their refunds.
“With an increase in the refund limit, about ₹1,000 crore more payments are expected to be made in the next 10 days,” the official said.
The government is very particular about refund claims and has been vetting the claims of depositors carefully before releasing the payment.
Sources said that the portal had received applications from about 1.25 crore people and not all of them were necessarily belonging to the co-operatives. Besides, the documentary proofs as submitted by the majority of the claimants were not “authentic”. For instance, many depositors who deposited in one co-operative society submitted receipts from another co-operative society since all these four societies of the Sahara group were operating from a common office, the sources said.
The CRCS-Sahara refund portal was launched in July 2023 following a Supreme Court order that approved the Centre’s proposal. The apex Court had allowed the transfer of ₹5,000 crore from the SEBI-Sahara refund account to the Central Registrar of Cooperative Societies (CRCS) in May last year. The refund process is being monitored by a panel led by former Supreme Court judge Justice R Subhash Reddy.
The societies are Sahara Credit Co-operative Society Ltd, Lucknow; Saharayn Universal Multipurpose Society Ltd, Bhopal; Humara India Credit Co-operative Society Ltd, Kolkata and Stars Multipurpose Co-operative Society Ltd, Hyderabad.
White revolution
The Co-operation Ministry official also said that Co-operation Minister Amit Shah on Thursday will launch three key initiatives – White Revolution 2.0 to transform the dairy sector, distribution of Micro-ATMs and Rupay-Kisan Credit Cards to dairy farmers – aimed at enhancing their financial access.
The White Revolution 2.0 targets 50 per cent increase in milk procurement by dairy cooperative societies over the next five years. The plan involves setting up and strengthening 1,00,000 existing district cooperative societies, multi-purpose district co-operative societies, and Multi-purpose Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (M-PACS). These will be linked to milk routes, with necessary infrastructure provided.
Initially, the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) will fund the initiative – to provide ₹ 40,000 to each of the selected 1,000 M-PACS. But, in future, the funding will be routed through the National Programme for Dairy Development 2.0, officials said.
‘Cooperation among Cooperatives’, another initiative, is aimed at providing interest-free cash credit to dairy farmers through Rupay-Kisan Credit Cards, the official said.