It's no election but selection for AIFF

New Delhi: For all those who awaited a keenly contested election on December 23 for the Executive Committee posts are in for a disappointment as the member state associations are in accord with the new selections.

Sources close to Goal.com have revealed that the current acting president Praful Patel wanted all members to arrive at a consensus before the D-day and hence only one nomination has been filed for each of the 16 posts, except in the case of Goa and north-east.

The nominations would be scrutinized later today by a representative from the Indian Olympic Association (IOA). “Once the scrutiny is done, we will have the final list, informed Hardev Jadeja, who has filed for the post of treasurer.

Goa Football Association (GFA) secretary Savio Messias and GFA president Joaquim Alemao had applied for nomination with the former’s application being rejected. The reasons being that if a secretary and president of the same state association apply then, the secretary’s application isn’t considered.

Alemao initially wanted to contest for the post of vice-president but due to Praful Patel being the representative from the West Zone, there wasn’t much that the Goa urban development minister could do.

Dilip Chakravarthy from Tripura wanted to stand for the elections but his application was dropped in favour of Larsing Sawyan from Meghalaya.

The north zone sees former Union minister, and father of the famous Manu Sharma who ruthlessly shot model Jessica Lal, Vinod Sharma being nominated for the post of vice-president.

Meanwhile, Amit Dev, son of the executive committee member S.R.Dev has also been nominated to give a hereditary angle to the AIFF posts!

The south zone saw a battle between C.R.Vishwanathan and R.Khaleel for the post of vice-president with the latter being favoured. Vishwanathan, the current vice-president from the south zone would have to be satisfied by just being a member of the executive committee. The average of the South zone nominees is 70+!

Politicians’ occupying the top spots in football is no strange as two Congressmen Vinod Sharma and Joaquim Alemao, apart from Civil Aviation minister Praful Patel, are at the helm of things.

West Zone: Praful Patel (VP), Amit Dev and Joaquim Alemao (members)

East Zone: Subrata Dutta (VP), Tempo Bhutia and M.Alam (members)

North East Zone: Ankur Dutta (VP), Larsing Sawyan and Ranjit Roy (members)

South Zone: R.Khaleel (VP), C. Vishwanathan and K.Mathur (members)

North Zone: Vinod Sharma (VP), Sunil Bharadhwaj and Inder Singh (members)

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