"In Maharashtra, there are 16,000 urban credit cooperative societies and many of them exist only on paper. Permission to such entities will be cancelled after close scrutiny," he said.
Chavan was addressing the International Cooperative Conference here, organised jointly by the state cooperative department and the Federation of Cooperative Credit Societies, to mark the birth centenary year of first chief minister Yashwantrao Chavan.
Observing that common people keep their deposits in these societies on trust, the chief minister said, "In many societies irregularities were reported and people's money was lost, but accused are roaming freely".
Underlining the need to check such practices, Chavan said the state government was mulling to amend the scope of the Maharashtra Cooperative Act to make it more "stringent".
Chavan said that measures like "Know Your Customer" (KYC) norms and online mechanism, on par with the nationalised banks, are necessary to be implemented in the Cooperative sector to protect interests of common people.
On "disparity" in paying audit fees, as alleged by the representatives of the urban credit societies, Chavan said the state government would take a decision in this regard in next ten days.
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The urban credit cooperative societies in the state currently pay two-and-a-half times more the audit fees compared to the cooperative banks.
As many as 14,000 representatives of the urban credit cooperative societies from across the country, besides 27 delegates from Thailand, Nepal, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Srilanka attended the event.
"A loan to the tune of Rs 18,500 crore was distributed through these societies across the country, out of Rs 24,000 crore kept in deposit by people," Chavan added.
Cooperative Minister Harshavardhan Patil also spoke on the occasion.