Press Club of India elections witnessed unprecedented Campaigning and Polling.
May 21, 2022, the Press club of Indian conducted its election for the management committee. A record number, total of 1791 votes were polled. Previously, in 2020 1784 votes were polled.
The panel of Umakant Lakheda has won all the 21 posts including the post of President. It has happened after a long time, that a single panel has won all the posts.
PCI Election Commission chief MMC Sharma announced the results.
Umakant Lakheda has once again won the post of President. He received 898 votes while Sanjay Basak stood second with 638 votes. Rash Bihari got 156 votes and Santosh Thapar got 46 votes.
Senior NDTV journalist Manoranjan Bharti has won the vice-president’s post. Bharti got 887 votes. Pawan Kumar was at number two. Kumar got 578 votes. KP Malik got 209 votes and Shakeel Ahmed got 52 votes.
Vinay Kumar has once again won the post of Secretary General. Kumar got 823 votes while Pallavi Ghosh came second with 668 votes. Sandeep Thakur got 165 votes and Rajiv Kumar Nishan got 68 votes. Rajiv Nishan had got his hoardings installed at many places in Delhi.
There were allegations on how the campaigning was been done this time. Allegedly voters were lured on promises of cheaper food and beverages and with PR and publicity campaigns spreads across the city. Members were receiving calls from PR agencies, says a member who do not wish to reveal his name.
Swati Mathur has won the post of Joint Secretary by securing 870 votes. Laxmi Devi Aire was at number two. He got 536 votes. Joginder Solanki got 244 votes and Ranjan Basu got 51 votes.
The Lakheda-Vinay panel won the treasurer’s post by a very small margin. While the winner Chandrashekhar Luthra got 787 votes, the runner-up Santosh Thakur got 776 votes. That is, the Lakheda-Vinay panel has won the post of treasurer by just 11 votes. There was a tough competition on this post.
All the 16 winners of the managing committee are also from the Lakheda-Vinay panel. Adesh Rawal, Amit Pandey, Amrita Madhukalya, Anish Kumar, Mahtab Alam, Kritika Sharma, M Abdul Bari Masood, Manvendra Vashist, Mayank Singh, Mihir Gautam, Rahil Chopra, Sangeeta Barua, Shamin Joy, Telprolu Srinivasa Rao, Vinay Bhushan Padmadev and Vinita Thakur has been elected to the Managing Committee.
Announcing the results, Chief Electoral Officer MMC Sharma said, “I have been associated with Press Club for so many years. To my knowledge, the highest voting has happened this time. Because of which we had to make two ballots.
