Bidar BJP MLA Gurupadappa Nagamarapalli dies of heart failure

Bengaluru, Nov 17: Gurupadappa Nagamarapalli, BJP MLA from Bidar, died of heart failure in Bengaluru in the wee hours of Tuesday. He had celebrated his 74 birthday on November 11. He had served as a Minister in three cabinets and was a legislator for six terms from Aurad and Bidar.

Nagamarapalli, however, had made a name for himself as a leader in the cooperative sector. He led the 92-year-old District Central Cooperative Bank in its most crucial period starting from 1985. The bank that started as a federation of village-level primary agriculture cooperative societies now provides crop loans for 60 per cent of the district’s farmers.

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development hailed the DCC bank’s promotion and linkage of self-help groups. Bidar is recognised as a SHG district by NABARD for having over 22,000 SHGs in 600 villages and 300 hamlets.

The SHGs promoted and linked by the DCC Bank have an internal lending of over Rs. 600 crore. Nagamarapalli founded the Naranja Sahakari Sakkare Karakhane cooperative sugar factory in 2000. The factory crushes over 5 lakh tones of sugarcane to produce 5 lakh quintals of sugar every year.

Gulbarga University gave him a honorary doctorate two years ago.

He became the chief promoter of Gurupadappa Nagamarapalli multi-state super specialty cooperative hospital in Bidar. Some of the wings of the hospital became operational a few months ago.

The DCC bank however, has faced inquiries into violation of the Cooperative Societies Act and other legal provisions in the past. An inquiry was started this year into allegations that the bank was diverting money meant for crop loans to collect shares for the cooperative hospital.