Lalitpur, February 16

Karma Tshiring Sherpa and Mani Kunwar are set to fight for the post of All Nepal Football Association (ANFA) president in the upcoming elections.

Former vice-president Sherpa filed his candidacy today, while Senior Vice-president Mani Kunwar had registered his nomination for the top post of Nepali football governing body yesterday.

According to the election committee, 11 candidates have filed their nominations for four vice-president posts, while 37 registered their nominations for 12 members, including two women candidates for one quota.

Sherpa had lost to Narendra Lal Shrestha in the elections held during the extraordinary congress in October last year, while Kunwar was elected as vice-president defeating Deepak Khati and Upendra Man Singh. Kunwar was later nominated as senior vice-president by the executive committee.

The election committee also published the final list of elective general assembly members. Out of the 77 members, the voting rights of Bhaktapur FA and Makawanpur FA along with Players Association have been suspended because of controversies in their elections. If they remain absent, the AMG will have 74 members — 43 district FAs, 14 ‘A’

division clubs, nine ‘B’ division clubs, five ‘C’ division clubs and one each from women, coach and referee associations.

“As we have not received the representatives of two district FAs and players associations, they will not be able to contest in election and propose or second the nominees. But they will be allowed to cast their votes if we receive their representatives’ list before the election programme,” said election committee convenor Suman Kumar KC.

Meanwhile, Kunwar announced his candidacy amidst a press conference today. “We cannot bring change unless and until we change ourselves. So my candidacy is for team leadership,” said Kunwar.

ANFA President Shrestha said the Three Star Club incident was only blemish of his tenure. “We made a mistake in the case of Three Star Club and that was a setback for Nepali football. Otherwise we were successful in our mission and I am happily taking a leave from the ANFA,” said Shrestha.

Regarding the much-talked league, Shrestha said the ANFA could not hold the tournament mainly because of three reasons. “Everybody asks me about the league. We could not organise it because of three reasons: Three Star incident, elections in the country and financial crunch,” said ANFA. “Now the ANFA has sponsor for the league and

we have also received Rs 60 million from FIFA, it will be easier for the new committee to organise the tournament,” he added.

He also countered Sherpa faction saying there was no any invisible force at the ANFA. “You just cannot blame others for your failure and you should take the responsibility on your own,” said Shrestha reacting to former CEO Indra Man Tuladhar’s accusation of “a dangerous and powerful invisible force always stood as a wall at the ANFA.”

Shrestha also blamed the Sherpa-led faction of making nonsense comments about change in the ANFA. “All of them are talking about change but I have not been able to understand what kind of change they are talking about. They have presented some five-six agendas and that’s what I have been doing at the ANFA and that is what the coming committee would follow. Last year, they had a agenda of financial transparency and I think as they could not raise a question on that they have come up with a new agenda of change,” said Shrestha. “May be they want to transform ANFA into a sister organisation of a political party,” he added.