Jeevan Ram Shrestha elected NOC president

KATHMANDU, Sept 3: Ten new faces have emerged in the executive committee of the internationally recognized Nepal Olympic Committee (NOC), which elected Jeevan Ram Shrestha as its new president on Thursday. Shrestha, the former general secretary of NOC, secured 17 out of 26 votes to beat his only opponent Umesh Lal Shrestha by eight votes. The latter, who was the vice president of the last executive committee, bagged nine votes.

The general assembly held at the NOC building in Satdobato elected a 17-member executive body, which will get full shape after nomination of four executive members and a vice president.

All of the nine members elected Thursday to the executive body and unanimously elected Treasurer Ratan Kumar Tandon are new faces in the NOC. Altogether 11 candidates had filed candidacy for nine posts of executive member. Newly-elected member Sunil Kumar Shrestha was an elected member in 2007. However, he was not in the last executive committee.

Former Deputy General Secretary Lama Tendi Sherpa was elected the general secretary. Out of three candidates for general secretary, Lama received 17 votes followed by eight votes of his closest rival Chhimi Urkyen Gurung, the former treasurer. The other candidate Deep Raj Gurung, a former member, secured just one vote. Chhimi and Deep Raj are the president and general secretary of the cycling and taekwondo associations respectively. Lama is also the president of Nepal Basketball Association.

"NOC has been successful to earn this height under the capable leadership of Dhruba Bahadur Pradhan during the last two tenures. The other phase of NOC is development, stability and ending uncertainty," said the newly-elected President Shrestha, who had served as the general secretary in the last two tenures.

"NOC will now look forward to work as per the standard norms of sports, try to represent the country at the international level with the view of achieving success."

He also claimed that the dispute with the nationally-recognized Olympic Committee was over and both the sides had agreed to work together.

Shrestha, who is also the president of Nepal Ski Association and a central committee member of the ruling CPN-UML, also pointed out the need to draft new acts and regulations of sports as per the international norms to remove confusion regarding existence of two associations - the nationally and internationally recognized sports bodies.

"As the Olympic movement is based on the values of International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), new acts and regulations must be drafted under the guidelines of those bodies. NOC will play constructive role in making such regulations on the basis of international values."

Meanwhile, Rajiv Shrestha and Chaturananda Raj Baidhya secured equal 13 votes each for the post of deputy general secretary. However, the former won the lucky draw as per election procedure and secured his place in the executive committee. Shrestha is the president of Nepal Boxing Association and Baidhya is the chief of Nepal Table Tennis Association.

Similarly, out of 11 contestants for nine members, Ang Tendi Sherpa (wushu), Sunil Kumar Shrestha (fencing), Tej Bahadur Gurung (handball), Sanjiv Tuladhar (athletics), Ramesh Kumar Shrestha (badminton), Ashok Ratna Bajracharya (swimming), Samim Miya Ansari (wrestling), Nilendra Raj Shrestha (triathlon) and Deepak Harsha Bajracharya (judo) emerged victorious in the election. Dan Bahadur Tamang (volleyball) and Binod Prajapati (kabaddi) failed to secure a place in the executive committee.

Dhirendra Pradhan (football), Jyoti Rana (lawn tennis), Purendra Bikram Lakhe (karate) and Rajendra Bantawa (fencing) were unanimously elected the vice presidents while Ratan Kumar Tandon (weightlifting) was elected the treasurer.