Kathmandu, March 13:

The Nepal Olympic Committee defied the Patan Appellate Court orders and held its elections today.

The court on Monday had ordered to postpone the scheduled elections until the next hearing on march 16 while hearing the writ petition filed by Kishor Bahadur Karki, president of the Nepal Shooting Association (NSA). But the international supervisors — Michel Filliau of International Olympic Committee and Haider Farman of Olympic Council of Asia — scrapped the disputed NSA from the voters list and held the elections.

Dhruba Bahadur Pradhan was unanimously elected the president for the next four-year term along with deputy general secretary Deep Raj Gurung and treasurer Upendra Keshari Neupane. The elections were held for four vice presidents, general secretary and seven members.

Sitaram Maskey, Ganga Bahadur Thapa, Umesh Lal Shrestha and Ravi Raj Thapa were elected the vice presidents. SK Singh got the least vote among the five contenders. Jeevan Ram Shrestha, who succeeded Kishor Bahadur Singh as the member secretary of the National Sports Council, won the battle for the general secretary post with 18-5 votes.

Out of the nine contestants for the seven members, Sunil Rajkarnikar, Chhimi Urken Gurung, Ravi Rajkarnikar, Purendra Bikram Lakhe, Dhirendra Pradhan, Rajendra Bantaba and Purushottam Prasad Shrestha won the elections. Yunus Ansari and Prasanna Man Shrestha failed to get the required votes.

“The dispute was with the shooting federation, so we decided to withdraw that association from the general assembly. According to the international federation, Puspa Das Shrestha is the president recognised by the international body and as there was a court intervention we consented with Shrestha and scrapped the association to continue with the Olympic movement,” said Filliau.

“We are not challenging any court or official. We are respectful to the law of the country. We supervised the elections and we will endorse the result. No one can challenge this now,” he added. “National Olympic Committee of Nepal is a fully autonomous body and no court can give order against our movement,” said Filliau. When asked who would be responsible if the court takes action against the NOC, the supervisors duo said that the IOC and OCA would fully support the NOC.

The newly-elected president said that he was unable to postpone the elections despite the orders from the court. “We did not disobey the court orders, but we held our elections as per our schedule and putting aside the disputed association,” he said. He also said that he was happy to hold the elections in democratic way unlike previous years when the NOC elections used to be held in a closed doors.

NRSON gets seats

KATHMANDU: A meeting of the newly elected NOC nominated Pravat Kiran Subedi as vice-president and Hukum Raj Giri as a member in its executive committee on Tuesday. Subedi is the general secretary and Giri member of the National Republic Sports Organisation, Nepal (NRSON).

The NRSON had been threatening the NOC to stop its elections until the elections of all the sports associations that have been running under ad hocism or were dissolved by the National Sports Council. They submitted the memorandum last week warning the NOC not to hold the elections and also gheraoed the NOC building on Sunday.

“We discussed plans of taking the Nepali sports to new horizon,” said NOC president Dhruba Bahadur Pradhan. “We decided to come up with a master plan to uplift the standard of sports.” — HNS