New Delhi, Jul 25 (IANS): Amid noisy protests by Congress-led opposition, seeking Prime Minister Narendra Modi's presence and response in Lok Sabha on the Manipur issue, the government on Tuesday passed the Multi-State Cooperative Societies (Amendment) Bill, which seeks to strengthen cooperatives by making them transparent and introducing a system of regular elections. 

Speaker Om Birla adjourned the House for the day soon after the bill was passed.

Piloting the bill, Cooperation Minister Amit Shah said that the provisions in the bill will initiate a new era for the sector, which had been ignored by the previous governments.

The bill was passed after a short discussion with only three members participating in it, amid vociferous protests by opposition members, who stood in the well of the House, shouting slogans and displaying placards, seeking Modi's reply on Manipur violence in Lok Sabha.

Meanwhile, in his response to the discussion on the bill, Shah said that there has been no policy on the cooperative sector since 2003.

"Before Diwali (November 10), we will come out with a National Cooperative Policy. It will lay the roadmap for the cooperative sector for the next 25 years," he said.

He also informed the Lower House that the government will start a university to train people in the cooperative sector, adding that a Cooperative University Bill would be brought and a national-level university will be set up for providing training in the cooperative sector.

"There is no database on the cooperative sector. We have decided to survey 8 lakh cooperative societies and identify areas where there are no cooperative societies. It will be a national database. More than 95 per cent work on the database has been done and it will be completed and released online by Dushehra (October 24)," Shah said in Lok Sabha.