Lucknow, Dec 21 (IANS) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday highlighted plans to achieve the target of “one district, one co-operative bank” soon, criticising the previous governments for harming farmers and banks by focusing more on “one district, one mafia”.  Speaking at the inauguration of Youth Cooperative Conference and UP Co-operative Expo-2025, CM Yogi said, “Today, there are over two lakh accounts and Rs 550 crore deposit in district co-operative banks -- a complete change in scenario from the pre-2017 era when 16 district co-operative banks were declared defaulters by the RBI.”

During those dark times, these banks faced the threat of losing their licences, he said. “Today, the district co-operative banks are not defaulters or sick but contributing to the prosperity of farmers and the state,” said the CM. The Chief Minister said that the 50 district co-operative banks in the state are profitable today. He said that earlier there was an infection that was slowly taking all the district co-operative banks towards sickness. “But we treated the disease well in time and restored the health of these banks,” he said.

The CM hit out at the previous Samajwadi Party government for ignoring co-operative banks and focusing more on promoting lawlessness and extortion through “one district, one mafia”. He said the mafia rule in the pre-2017 era spelt doom for the co-operative sector. “Farmers’ money got stuck in co-operative banks. We gradually got farmers’ Rs 4,700 crore restored through the revival of these banks,” he said.

“Today, Uttar Pradesh is rid of mafia and moving towards ‘One district, One Co-operative bank’ as this is the right strategy even for financial inclusion and employment generation,” he said. Urging the youth to lead the cooperative movement and take the state on the path of development, the Chief Minister said the youth are the future and the architects of the cooperative movement. “This youth cooperative conference will prove to be a new milestone in the direction of the state's prosperity and collective development,” he said.