MARGAO: The Registrar of Co-Operative Societies had appointed administrators for eight housing co-operative societies during the last financial year while this year it has sent reminders to 553 such institutions for their failure to file the audited reports and their annual returns in time.
The registered housing co-operative societies are supposed to submit minutes of their meeting, audited accounts and annual returns to the Registrar of Societies every year and whenever the same is not done, they are first sent a reminder to do so. Failure to send the audited accounts and returns after receipt of the reminder would lead to issuing a show-cause notice asking the society why it should not be deregistered. Failure to respond to the show cause notice results in the managing committee being derecognised and an administrator being appointed.
During the last financial year administrators were appointed to eight housing co-operative societies and after that the societies started preparing their accounts and getting them audited. In fact, a housing co-operative society from Zuarinagar has even got a new managing committee in place. The Registrar of Co-operative Societies has now sent reminders to 553 housing co-operative societies for not submitting audited accounts and returns for the financial year 2016-2017 and according to Assistant Registrar Ulka Bandekar, the next course of action will be known in two months time depending upon the response from the recipients of the reminders.
“The societies have six months time from the end of the financial year to appoint an auditor from those empanelled by the Registrar and if they fail to do so then we can appoint an auditor. However, the situation becomes clear only by May and that is when we can act,” she said.
Incidentally, during the last financial year there were 1038 housing co-operative societies registered in the South Zone with 752 in Salcete and 285 in Mormugao talukas.
