Cooperation Ministry’s 9th National Review Workshop Ends in Bastar

The correct answer is Bastar in Chhattisgarh, where the two-day workshop was held on 8 and 9 October 2026 and ended with a call for state-specific and time-bound action plans. Option B is wrong, though Odisha does figure in the discussions, because the deliberations covered cooperative development in the Left Wing Extremism affected districts of Chhattisgarh and Odisha. Options C and D are wrong as no part of the event was held there. The choice of venue is itself worth noting for the examination: holding a national review of the cooperative sector in a district long affected by extremism fits the stress laid at the workshop on cooperative growth in the North Eastern states and the eastern frontier regions.

The correct answer is December 2026. The Secretary of the Ministry of Cooperation set that deadline for finishing the first phase of computerising Primary Agricultural Credit Societies, and asked in the same breath that audits for the years 2024-25 and 2025-26 be completed by October 2026. Options A, C and D are wrong because none of them was the deadline announced. Candidates should link the deadline with the wider push described at the meeting: states were asked to set up new PACS faster and widen their membership so that District Central Cooperative Banks rest on a stronger base, while cooperative banks were told to invest in cybersecurity, modern core banking systems and digital services to hold their customers.

The same session also took up decentralised grain storage, fertiliser business plans for cooperative societies and farmer friendly financing options such as pledge finance, all of which rest on the record keeping that computerisation is meant to deliver.

The correct answer is Dr Ashish Kumar Bhutani, Secretary in the Ministry of Cooperation, who closed the workshop by calling the discussions productive and asking states to move from discussion to implementation. Option A is a tempting distractor, because the ministry functions under Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah and the workshop was held under his leadership, but the concluding remarks came from the Secretary. Option C is wrong, although a presentation by NABARD on a uniform Core Banking Solution platform was appreciated at the session. Option D is wrong as well. The Secretary stressed that one model of cooperative development cannot suit every state, and that successful district level innovations should be documented, repeated and scaled up.

The correct answer is exports, organics and seeds. NCEL is National Cooperative Exports Limited, NCOL is National Cooperative Organics Limited and BBSSL is Bharatiya Beej Sahakari Samiti Limited, the national seed cooperative. At the workshop the Secretary said several states had used these three bodies well, and that they were opening up aggregation of farm produce, access to wider markets and better prices for farmers and cooperative members. Options B, C and D are wrong because they do not match the three abbreviations, even though dairy cooperatives, fisheries, fertiliser business plans and decentralised grain storage were all taken up in separate sessions of the same workshop. Remember the three expansions together, as they are a frequent target for questions.