SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, Sept 18: The Dhanbad Olympic Association’s election has taken an interesting turn. After scrutiny on Friday, the current working president of Jharkhand Olympic Association (JOA), SM Hashmi, and ex-executive president BC Thakur are now in a straight contest for the post of District Olympic Committee President. The election is scheduled on September 26 and 54 voters of 27 affiliated sports bodies of the district will elect the president and other office-bearers. This election is very significant as its result will impact the State Olympic Association.
At present, Hashmi is the president and Thakur is the chairman of this district Olympic body. But besides contesting against each other, both have fielded their candidates on each post of the association. All eyes are constantly on this election as these two sports stalwarts of the state were once close friends and now have turned foe to each other. RK Anand was elected as the president and Madhukant Pathak was chosen for the post of treasurer.
In 2001, when the Jharkhand Olympic Association was formed, Thakur and Hashmi were elected as executive president and general secretary respectively. However, their friendship took a bitter twist when Thakur was removed from the post of JOA executive president a few years later. After the 34th National Games scam, Hashmi fell apart from RK Anand and Madhukant Pathak’s group. This resulted in Hashmi’s defeat in the 2017 Jharkhand Olympic Association’s election where he lost it to Vishal Sharma of Palamu district. He was also removed from the Dhanbad Olympic Association by Thakur as revenge who became the president in the same year.
The fortune of Hashmi turned around in April 2021 when he was reinstated in JOA after four years. He was nominated working president of JOA along with Shekhar Bose of Ranchi. Before this, he also became the president of the Dhanbad district Olympic Association in 2019.
District Olympic Association’s general secretary Ranjit Keshri in this regard said that four candidates namely Zubair Alam, Pramod Kapoor, Reja Ishtiyaque and Rajendra Singh Virdi are in the fray for three posts of senior vice-president while eight candidates namely Madan Roy, Anupam Mahata, Santosh Kumar Singh, Kiran Rani Nayak, Kalol Samanta, Samrat Choudhari, SK Patnayak and Binod Kumar Sinha are in for six posts of vice-president.
Ranjit Kesri and Asit Sahay are also in direct contest for the post of general secretary..
