Whose election was it anyway? Well, this is the moot question that arises after parallel groups in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh went ahead with the polls in the respective Olympic Associations on Saturday and Sunday.
Interestingly, the group led by Prof. K. Ranga Rao held the elections on Saturday with senior official K. Murugan as the IOA observer. Mr. Rao was elected president of the Telangana Olympic Association and S.R. Premraj as the general secretary. All office-bearers were elected unanimously.
“The IOA has nothing to do with the group led by K. Jagdishwar Yadav, which went to polls on Sunday,” Mr. Murugan informed The Hindu . “The election procedure was duly completed in the presence of a Returning Officer who had also declared the complete list of office-bearers,” the senior IOA official explained.
Interestingly, Mr. Murugan was also the observer for the Andhra Pradesh Olympic Association elections held after the bifurcation of the parent body recently.
Meanwhile, even IOA general secretary Rajeev Mehta wrote a letter to the incumbent secretary of the united APOA, K. Jagdishwar Yadav, on April 29, restraining him from holding any meeting without the apex body’s permission.
However, on Sunday, Mr. Yadav’s group went ahead with the originally scheduled bifurcation of APOA and elections to Telangana and AP units without any IOA observer.
In the elections, A.P. Jitender Reddy, MP, was elected president of the Telangana body and Mr. Yadav as general secretary along with other office-bearers, unanimously.
“The IOA was expected to send an observer. It didn’t. Since our election process is over as per a court order, we will wait for a couple of days for its response. Or else, we will be forced to initiate contempt of court proceedings,” Mr. Yadav informed The Hindu .
Elections were also held to residuary AP Olympic Association with C.M. Ramesh as president and J.C. Pawan Reddy as secretary, putting a question mark on the elections held earlier, where Galla Jayadev, MP, was elected as president.
