Shillong, Aug 20: Contradicting every media house in the country, Eugeneson Lyngdoh will not, in fact, stand for All India Football Federation President but is instead running for a seat on the AIFF’s Executive Committee.
Even the most reputed media houses (and TSR too) had reported yesterday that Lyngdoh, the Meghalaya Football Association’s representative on the electoral college, is one of those contesting for the position of President.
However, today afternoon saw the election’s Returning Officer publish the full list of candidates for the posts of President, Treasurer and Executive Committee members. Lyngdoh’s name only features on the latter and he confirmed to TSR this evening that he is not running for President.
There are seven people in all who are running for the post, however – former India international Bhaichung Bhutia; former Mohun Bagan and East Bengal goalkeeper Kalyan Chaubey; NA Haris of the Karnataka State Football Association; Manvendra Singh from Rajasthan; Valanka Natasha Alemao of Goa, who is the only woman in the list; Football Delhi President Shaji Prabhakaran; and Ajit Banerjee of the Indian Football Association (the West Bengal governing body).
There are another six contenders for Treasurer – Alemao again (it’s permitted to run for multiple posts); Kipa Ajay of Arunachal Pradesh; Gopalakrishna Kosaraju of Andhra Pradesh (his was another name wrongly listed in the media as running for President); Menla Ethenpa of Sikkim; Deepak Sharma of Himachal Pradesh; and Arif Ali of Uttarakhand.
Fourteen people have filed their nominations for 10 seats on the Executive Committee. Besides Lyngdoh, these are Ethenpa and Alemao again; Anilkumar P of Kerala; Avijit Paul of Odisha; GP Palguna of Telangana; Vijay Bali of Punjab; Lalnghinglova Hmar of Mizoram; Syed Imtiaz Husain of Bihar; Mohan Lal of Chhattisgarh; Deepak Sharma of Himachal Pradesh; Moirangthem Ratankumar Singh of Manipur; Md Shahid of Uttar Pradesh; and the only ’eminent player’ among the 14, Madhu Kumari.
The nominations will be scrutinised on Sunday from 11AM. After that, candidates with valid nominations will have until 24th August to withdraw their names from contention.
The election will then take place on 28th August.
(TSR file photo)
