LAHORE: Khalid Mahmood has been re-elected as secretary general of the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) by securing 93 votes out of 95 from the general body of the POA.

The elections were held in a hotel on Tuesday for the tenure of four years, starting from Feb 4, 2012.

Khalid had been elected unopposed on the same post in February 2012 but his rival filed a case against him due to which a court ordered holding of elections of all candidates again other than the one of POA president Arif Hasan.

This time there were no rival candidates on all the 39 vacant seats, yet it was decided that every member will cast a vote to elect an office-bearer.

At the end of the voting, Khalid was declared successful with the highest number of votes.

International Cricket Council’s former president Ehsan Mani was the head of the five-member election commission which conducted the elections.

A representative of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Farhan Haider also attended the meeting as an observer to monitor the process.

POA president retired Lt Gen Arif Hasan said Farhan belonged to the Olympic Council of Asia, and the IOC specially assigned him the duty to oversee the elections.

Meanwhile, Ehsan said the entire process was conducted according to the rules and regulations of the POA.

When asked why the members had to cast their votes instead of electing all the office-bearers unopposed as there were no rival candidates, the POA president said the general body had done that in 2012 but the court ordered them to hold their elections again.

He added that luckily he (Arif) had been elected through ballot by defeating Akram Sahi and Qasim Zia and the court recognised his election.

“For that reason, the POA has been contesting cases in honourable courts for two-and-a-half years. We therefore decided

not to repeat the mistake this time,” he said.

He added that no one from Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) and Wapda could contest elections on technical grounds. The election commission did not acknowledge their nominations as they were neither proposed nor seconded by any one.

Pakistan Air Force and Higher Education Commission were not allowed by the commission to take part in the elections as they failed to send their nominations.

Meanwhile, Army has returned back to the Arif Hasan-led POA along with Navy. All the three services had been supporting the Akram Sahi group but now they have decided to follow the POA led by Gen Arif Hasan which is recognised by the IOC.

He said three representatives of the PHF also attended the meeting. They were PHF president Akhtar Rasool, Tanzeela Aamir and Anjum Saeed.

PHF secretary Rana Mujahid’s name was not recommended by the PHF for this meeting as he is serving a ban imposed by the POA.

Meanwhile, Arif said that the POA would soon get possession of the Olympic House back which is under the custody of Akram Sahi group.

The IOC and the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) has authorised Arif’s body to get the Olympic House back.

Arif, however, disclosed that one of the frozen accounts of the POA had been restored and the rest would also be unfrozen soon.

The accounts had been frozen on the instructions of the PSB which had also given possession of the Olympic House to Akram Sahi. But later the PSB had to make a U-turn as IOC had threatened to suspend Pakistan for violating the Olympic charter.

Office-bearers:

President: Lt Gen Arif Hasan.

Vice presidents: Shaukat Javed, Aqil Shah, Afzal Awan, Mohammad Yaqoob, Abid Qadri, Kamran Lashari, Iftikhar Ahmad Tabassum, Saiyid M. Sibtain, Fatima Lakhani.

Secretary general: Khalid Mahmood.

Associate secretaries: Ahmad Ali, Mohammad Jahangir, Zulifqar Ali Butt, Haider Khan Lehri, Idris Haider Khawaja, Hafiz Imran Butt, Veena Salman Masud.

Treasurer: Mohammad Shafiq

Executive members: Pervaiz Shah Khawar, Painda Malik, Jamil Ahmed Rana, Zainab Shaukat, Shahid Nazir, Rizwan-ul-Haq Razi, Iqbal Hussain, Ahmad Yar Lodhi, Wasimuddin Hashmi, Naqi Mohsin, Majid Waseem, Iftikhar Ahmed Awan, Mohammad Asghar, Waseem Ahmad, Javaid Shamshad, Robina Irfan, Arif Saeed, Hafeezullah Khan, Fawazi Khawaja and Shakil Haider.

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2014