The list of candidates after scrutiny was pasted on Wednesday at the IFFCO headquarters which clearly showed who is where in the contest. While it became obvious that there will be intense fights over five seats, there were three clear winners including Ovr Ramachandran, K S Gowda and Balbir Singh.
While, as predicted in these columns Uttam Patil withdrew under the Chief Ministerial pressure in favour of K S Gowda, Ramachandran and Balbir were lucky as the nominations of their rivals were rejected.
Ovr Ramachandran phoned Indian Cooperative late evening Wednesday after his name appeared as a winner, thanking it for this day in his life. It bears recall that five years back it was Indian Cooperative where he read about IFFCO elections. He wrote a mail to us and wanted guidance to be an RGB member.
Indian Cooperative forwarded his mail to the then Chief Election Officer Dr G N Saxena and IFFCO MD Dr U S Awasthi. The duo helped him complete the formalities and he became an RGB member and today he has become a Board member.
Now this leaves the contest on five seats where votes would be cast on 10 May. These are Haryana-Delhi, MP-Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Maharashtra and woman constituency.
From Haryana-Delhi seat the outgoing director and former minister Prahalad Singh and Sunil Khatri are in race whereas from Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh, Amit Pratap Singh and Manju Singh Deo are in the fray. Amit is the son of Madhya Pradesh Cooperation Minister Govind Singh and, as most of the votes (27 out of 37) are in MP he is said to be a sure to win the election.
From Odisha-West Bengal seat Simachal Padhy and Chandra Kumar Purohit are fighting. Undisturbed Padhy said “there is a small hitch but I will scrape through” to Indian Cooperative at IFFCO headquarters.
There would be contests for women seats where two candidates are left in the fray after the rejection of nomination papers of Jyoti Ram Gutte. Now Sadhana Jadhav and Dr Varsha Kasturkar are in the fray each claiming to be better placed than the other.
While it is mostly one to one in the constituencies going to the polls, the election will be intense in Maharashtra-Telangana-Andhra Pradesh-Goa constituency from where eight nominations have been filed.
Today is the day for withdrawal of nomination papers and the list after withdrawal is likely to be published in the evening. On 10th the election of the board of directors will be held. There is speculations that in the intervening period of now and the election day several candidates may withdraw their names.
Win for OVR From tamilnadu….