KAA holds polls against RoS order

Disregarding the directive of the Registrar of Societies (RoS), the Karnataka Athletic Association (KAA) went ahead with their elections on Sunday, picking Sunil Kumar Shetty as its new president.

The RoS had directed the KAA on Saturday to defer their polls and to address the violations of bye-laws it had found in the election process initiated last month. The registrar was acting on a complaint from Ashwini Nachappa, one of the KAA vice-presidents.

The violations included the naming of a lawyer as a returning officer, not allowing seven district associations to be part of the voters' list and the vice-president issuing the election notice instead of the secretary.

The RoS wanted the elections to be held before May 30 as per the High Court order after clearing these violations.

However, KAA decided to stick to its stand. "We have already initiated the process and didn't want to stop it. Twenty district associations attended today's meeting," said Shetty. "An observer from the Athletics Federation of India (C Latha, Tamil Nadu Athletics Association secretary) was also present at the meeting. We will now await the decision of the AFI," he added.

H T Mahadeva was elected senior vice-president, a new post, while Thimma Reddy, S S Hiremath and Sadanand M Naik were elected vice-presidents. A Rajavelu is the secretary and A N Prabhakar the treasurer.