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Former footballer Kalyan Chaubey has been elected as the President of the All India Football Federation (AIFF). Kalyan defeated the legendary Bhaichung Bhutia in the election for the top post.
The 45-year-old Chaubey, a former goalkeeper with Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, won 33-1.
Chaubey, a BJP politician who lost the last parliamentary election for the Krishnanagar seat in West Bengal, never played for the India senior team though he was in the squad on a few occasions.
Bhutia and Chaubey were one-time teammates at East Bengal.
Karnataka Football Association president N A Haris, a sitting Congress MLA, won the election for the lone post of vice president, beating Manvendra Singh of Rajasthan.
Arunachal Pradesh’s Kipa Ajay beat Gopalakrishna Kosaraju of Andhra Pradesh for the treasurer’s post. All the 14 candidates who had filed nominations for as many executive committee members’ posts were elected unopposed.
At first it was decided by around 28 of the 34 state football associations of the electoral college, who met in a hotel here in the Capital before the nominations were filed, that only one person will file nomination for each post so that he/she can get elected unopposed. But some members walked out of the meeting and took a decision to file nominations.
On the very first day of nomination, Bhaichung had filed his papers for the post of president, which was proposed by Andhra Pradesh and seconded by Rajasthan
Later Chaubey while interacting with the media said, “At the outset, we will work on a short-term plan, and will then meet in Kolkata later this month. We have fought in the Supreme Court together for the last 19 months, and it has taken up a lot of time, effort, and resources from everyone to reach this stage”.
