Amit Shah Launches Bharat Taxi and NHEC Revival in Pune

Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah set three cooperative-sector projects going at Talegaon Dabhade in Maharashtra's Pune district on 15 November 2026. He performed the Bhoomi Pujan for rebuilding the National Heavy Engineering Cooperative Limited (NHEC) multi-state cooperative society, opened the Western Regional Office of the Central Registrar of Cooperative Societies (CRCS) over a video link, and flagged off Bharat Taxi services in the city. He tied all three to the government's goal of 'Sahkar se Samriddhi'. Deputy Chief Ministers Eknath Shinde and Sunetra Ajit Pawar, Ministers of State Krishan Pal Gurjar and Murlidhar Mohol, and Cooperation Secretary Ashish Kumar Bhutani were at the event.

NHEC and how it is being rebuilt

NHEC once built sugar mills and centrifugal machinery on this very site and shipped them to 11 countries, Zambia, Ethiopia and Vietnam among them. Its order book was so full that a fresh order could take about four years to reach the buyer. The unit later shut down, and its land, roughly 110 acres, began to face the threat of encroachment. The Ministry of Cooperation put the National Dairy Development Board in as administrator, cleared two years of pending audits, and raised the money for the rebuild along with Amul, NCDC, IFFCO, NABARD and IPL. A reconstituted board of directors resolved at its first meeting, held on 9 October 2026, to rebuild the society. Shah said he expects production to begin before December 2027, with the liabilities and loans rescheduled and settled transparently.

What the new plant is to make

• Sugar mills, and power generation plants for sugar mills
• Compressed Biogas (CBG) plants and ethanol plants
• Dairy sector processing equipment
• Containers for the railways, defence and export markets, in the second phase

Bharat Taxi and the Sarathi model

Bharat Taxi is a taxi service built on the cooperative model and meant to spread across the country. Its drivers, called Sarathis, keep every rupee they earn: the money reaches their bank accounts directly with no commission taken out. Share certificates were handed to Sarathis during the programme, which makes them owners of the enterprise rather than hired drivers. Shah asked for the service to be taken to Nagpur, Nashik, Kolhapur and Solapur after Pune.

The new CRCS office and the sector's relief

The Pune office will carry out regulatory work for multi-state cooperative societies in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Daman and Diu. Shah also listed earlier help given to the sector: relief of about Rs 15,000 crore to cooperative sugar mills and income tax relief of roughly Rs 3,000 crore a year. He named Vitthalrao Vikhe Patil and Vaikunthbhai Mehta as pioneers of Maharashtra's cooperative movement, called Pune the fountainhead of cooperation in western India, and paid tribute to Bhagwan Birsa Munda on his 151st birth anniversary. A Letter of Intent was exchanged between NHEC and IDMC Limited at the programme.