The battle for control of Maharashtra's largest milk cooperative has moved from the ballot box to the statute book. Weeks after losing the election to the Kolhapur District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union, better known by its brand name Gokul, the state's ruling Mahayuti alliance has pushed through a Cabinet decision that could hand it the majority it failed to win from voters.
The move has triggered a sharp political confrontation, with the Congress accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party of changing the rules after losing, and the ruling alliance defending the decision as a reform of cooperative governance.
The story begins with the election held on October 19. Congress leader Satej Patil, heading the Rajarshi Shahu Shetkari Samvichari Aghadi, took on the combined strength of Maharashtra's three ruling parties — the BJP, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party — for control of Gokul. Patil's panel won 13 of the board's 25 seats.
The Mahayuti-backed panel won 12. It was a narrow victory, but a significant one. The BJP had claimed it would win all 25 seats.
Instead, it lost by a single seat to a Congress leader whose party had failed to win a single Assembly seat in Kolhapur district in the 2024 election, and whom the BJP had described as politically finished.
On Wednesday, however, the state Cabinet approved a proposal that could fundamentally alter the balance of power in the cooperative. The Cabinet decided to promulgate an ordinance amending Section 73AAA (2) of the Maharashtra Cooperative Societies Act, 1960. Under the proposal, the government can appoint four expert directors and one officer of the rank of Deputy Registrar to the boards of apex cooperative institutions such as Gokul.
Four of the five nominees would have voting rights. If those four voting nominees join the Gokul board, the ruling alliance's side could have 16 votes against Patil's 13 — turning a defeat into a majority without a single extra vote being cast.
The numbers explain why the decision matters so much. Gokul is no ordinary cooperative. Established on March 16, 1963, the Kolhapur District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union is among Maharashtra's largest dairy cooperatives, with an annual turnover of Rs 3,966.28 crore in 2024-25.
It is connected to nearly 4.41 lakh milk producers through 8,009 village-level primary societies spread across an estimated 1,810 villages in and around Kolhapur district. Control of Gokul means influence over the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of farming families, and over a network of village institutions that has long been a base of rural political power in western Maharashtra.
For the BJP, gaining control of Gokul is part of a larger effort to expand its footprint in a region where Congress and NCP leaders have traditionally exercised considerable influence through cooperative institutions. In June, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis intervened personally to bring the Mahayuti constituents together for the Gokul election.
The alliance fielded a common panel backed by ministers, legislators and MPs, with Medical Education Minister Hasan Mushrif leading the campaign. The ruling alliance was confident of winning. The defeat, therefore, was not just a local setback but a blow to the alliance's claim to dominance in the cooperative sector.
The fight over Gokul moved from the ballot to the boardroom on October 29, when the new board met to elect its chairman. All 12 Mahayuti-backed directors stayed away from the meeting, denying Patil's panel the 14 members required for a quorum. Patil's 13 directors then met separately and declared Shashikant Patil Chuyekar the chairman.
The Bombay High Court has since directed a fresh election for the chairman's post on November 10. The Cabinet's decision comes six days before that court-ordered meeting, and its timing has not gone unnoticed.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi reacted sharply on Thursday, accusing the BJP of attempting to take control of the federation after losing the election. In a post on X, reacting to a post by Congress leader Pawan Khera, Gandhi said the milk producers had defeated the BJP, prompting the party to change the rules after its defeat. "So the BJP changed the rules after the election — stuff in 4 directors, turn 12 into 16, steal the majority. This is theft of the milk producers' votes — adulteration in the mandate," he said.
Satej Patil has announced that he will challenge the government's decision in the Bombay High Court, accusing it of attempting to undermine the mandate of milk producers.
Former Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan was equally blunt, describing the move as anti-constitutional and a broad daylight robbery of public institutions. He called it a murder of democracy and a violation of the tenets of the Constitution, arguing that the BJP had failed to win a majority in the closely contested election and had therefore come up with a proposal to snatch control of Gokul from the opposition.
The history of Gokul explains why the stakes are so high. Control of the cooperative has rarely changed hands. Former MLAs Mahadevrao Mahadik and the late P. N. Patil dominated Gokul for 30 years, until Satej Patil and Hasan Mushrif, then of the undivided NCP, wrested control from them in May 2021, when the Maha Vikas Aghadi was in power.
The 2021 victory was itself a major political upset. The October election was supposed to settle the question of who controls the institution. Instead, it has opened a new chapter.
For the Congress, the Gokul result offered a rare bright spot in a difficult period. In the 2024 Assembly election, the party failed to win a single seat in Kolhapur district, and the BJP called it the end of Patil's career. Earlier this year, Patil made the Congress the single largest party in the Kolhapur zilla parishad and municipal corporation polls, but the three ruling parties combined to keep him from a majority.
The Gokul victory, won against two Cabinet ministers, two MPs and 10 MLAs of the ruling alliance, was therefore a personal and political vindication for Patil. The Cabinet decision now threatens to take that victory away.
The government's defenders are likely to argue that nominated expert directors bring professional expertise to cooperative boards, and that the amendment applies to apex cooperative institutions generally, not only to Gokul. But the timing, and the arithmetic, make that argument difficult to sustain in the eyes of the opposition.
The amendment was approved days after the election result, days before the chairman's election, and in a form that would precisely reverse the outcome of the vote. For the Congress, that sequence is the whole case.
The dispute now heads to the courts, and to the court-ordered chairman's election on November 10. Patil has said he will challenge the Cabinet decision in the Bombay High Court. The High Court, which has already intervened once to direct a fresh election, will now have to weigh the government's power to amend cooperative law against the mandate delivered by the milk producers.
The outcome will matter far beyond Kolhapur. Cooperative institutions across Maharashtra — sugar factories, district banks, milk unions — have long been the backbone of rural politics, and a precedent that allows a government to rewrite the composition of a board after losing an election would be watched closely by every party.
For the 4.41 lakh milk producers who are members of Gokul, the dispute is not an abstraction. Their votes produced a clear result: 13 seats for Patil's panel, 12 for the ruling alliance. Whether that result stands, or whether four nominated directors will sit alongside the elected board and change its majority, is now a question for the courts and for the politics of Maharashtra.
What is already clear is that the election to Maharashtra's largest dairy has become one of the sharpest tests of how far a ruling alliance will go to hold on to an institution it could not win at the ballot box.
(Reporting based on The Indian Express, The New Indian Express and Moneycontrol.)