RK Shetty replaces KPS Gill as IHF chief

NEW DELHI: Former top cop KPS Gill’s nearly two-decade long association with Indian hockey ended on Monday with RK Shetty replacing him as the president of the Indian Hockey Federation.

In a special general body meeting attended by representatives of 50 state units, the IHF completed its election process and announced the new office bearers of the federation, which was stayed following the orders of Patna High Court in October.

Apart from Shetty, the newly-constituted body of IHF will have four vice-presidents — two men and two women (PS Gill of Punjab, Dinesh Reddy of Hyderabad, Jatinder Peters of Uttarakhand and Farrel Furtado Gracious of Goa), secretary general, two secretaries, two joint secretaries, treasurer and five executive board members.

Ashok Mathur of Delhi has been elected as the secretary general while Suman Puri will don the hat of treasurer.

“On October 3 we held our AGM and election but we could not declare the results as the meeting was adjourned after Patna High Court came out with a stay order following a case filed by Sh Ejaz Hussain.

“But the stay order was recently vacated after the court dismissed the case and fined Rs 20,000 to the petitioner for misleading the court,” IHF secretary general Mathur said.

“But today the election process was finally completed. We followed all the government guidelines. We appointed a retired High Court judge Justice SK Dubey as the returning officer.

“There was no contest and all the office bearers were elected unopposed. We will soon send the result to the government,” he added.

While Mathur admitted that there was no representative from the government in today’s meeting, he said all the proceedings took place under the watchful eyes of returning officer Justice Dubey.

Elected office bearers of IHF:

RK Shetty (president); PS Gill, Dinesh Reddy, Jatinder Peters, Farrel Furtado Gracious (vice-president); Ashok Mathur (secretary general); Keshub Mahanta, Bula Ganguly (secretary); Chandan Deb, Happy Mann (joint secretary); Suman Puri (treasurer); Charanjit Singh Raheja, I Rehman, TR Thirumurgan, Radha Murthy and Zotham Kimi (executive members).