The polls for Anand-based KDCMPUL’s new board will be held on August 29.

A notification issued for the forthcoming polls state that the last day of submitting nominations is August 13.

Scrutiny of nominations will be done the following day after which list of candidates will be published.

Candidates can withdraw their nominations till August 18. While elections will be held at Amul Dairy premises on August 29, counting will be done on August 31.

By Saturday evening, over 30 candidates had filed their candidature for the 14 seats of board of directors representing Anand, Khambhat, Borsad, Petlad, Thasra, Balasinore, Kathlal, Kapadwanj, Mehmedabad, Matar, Nadiad and Virpur blocks among others. Khambhat and Kapadwanj are reserved for female candidates this time.

Amul Dairy’s sitting chairman Ramsinh Parmar, who is now with BJP and vice-chairman Rajendrasinh Parmar, who is a Congress MLA, have filed their candidatures.

A total of 1,214 representatives of milk societies are eligible to exercise their voting right in the polls.

Interestingly, in 2015 it was for the first time in its history that three BJP-backed candidates had got elected to the dairy’s board in which Congress with nine out of 14 members were in majority.

During the 2015 polls, the Congress panel led by Ramsinh, who was serving his sixth term as Congress MLA from Thasra, had won a total of 10 seats.

The twist in the tale came when Ramsinh, who is serving as dairy’s chairman since 2002, joined the BJP just ahead of the Rajya Sabha election in 2017. After switching sides, Ramsinh even got elected as chairman of GCMMF which he remained till last month.

Now, ahead of Amul Dairy’s polls, all eyes are set on the next move of both BJP and Congress camps. Both Ramsinh and Rajendrasinh have so far maintained that party politics will not play any role in the co-operative elections.