Lalitpur, October 9

The extra ordinary congress of All Nepal Football Association today removed the restrictions on president’s candidates and opened doors for commoners as well.

“As per the new provisions in the amended statute, any one with two years of contribution in football can file the candidacy for the post of ANFA president,” said CEO Indra Man Tuladhar. “But the candidate should get two members from the general council to propose and second the candidacy,” he added. Previously the ANFA president candidate needed to have five each members of the general council to propose and second the candidacy.

The extra ordinary congress — called mainly to discuss about the statute and Ruslan Three Star Club compensation issue — amended a total of 38 points in 20 articles of the statute. “Among the proposals tabled by the executive committee as per the instructions of AFC and FIFA, two were rejected by the congress,” said Tuladhar. “We had proposed to remove Women’s Committee as a permanent body of ANFA and reduced the number of delegates to two in the general assembly. But that was rejected by the congress and the previous provision of three delegates from each district FAs was restored,” he added.

The congress also included a provision of amending the statute as per the country’s structure. “We will have to change the statute once the nation goes into federal system. The new committee, which will be elected after two-and-half months will have to do a lot of works on that. We have included this provision in the statute,” said ANFA President Narendra Shrestha.

The congress extended the size of the general council to 77 — 45 district FAs, 28 clubs and four committees. “We have now 14 ‘A’ division clubs and we raised the quota for ‘B’ division to nine and ‘C’ division to five,” said Shrestha. “We amended the statute as per the instructions of the international bodies and the restrictions on president’s candidacy were removed as blocking anyone from the elections was against the reform policy of FIFA,” he added.

Asked about Three Star Club’s issue, Shrestha said the congress endorsed the executive committee’s decision and that the ANFA would implement that in due course. “I have always accepted the fact that the incident happened due to human error and no one was against providing compensation to the club. There were some issues which are now settled,” he said. “The best part is that Three Star Club will return to football and it will be easier for us to conduct events.”

Three Star remained out of action as they were not included in the AFC Cup second round after the ANFA missed the deadline to register the club. The winners of the group-stage tournament in Mongolia, Three Star Club had also demanded the compensation of Rs 60 million. But the two parties later settled for Rs 15 million apart from four foreign tours for the club.

The congress also decided to form three committees -- ethics, election and appeal. “The executive will form the ethics committee but only the general assembly will have the rights to remove it,” said CEO Tuladhar. “As far as election and appeal committees are concerned, the executive committee has taken the mandate from the congress to form them and take consent from all the members,” he added.