Behera group sweeps OOA poll unopposed

All 22 office-bearers of Orissa Olympic Association (OOA), including president Samir Dey and general secretary Asirbad Behera, were elected unopposed today, well ahead of the annual general meeting and elections, scheduled to be held on September 28. Voting became redundant as the scrutiny committee received no other nomination paper for verification at Cuttack today. This is the sixth time in a row that Behera was elected as the OOA secretary. Interestingly, he occupied the post for the first time in 1988 when the election was conducted inside the High Court. This is also the fourth time in a row that secretary Behera was elected uncontested. With this victory, Behera retained his `double` following his triumph as the secretary of Orissa Cricket Association, a month ago. For Samir Dey, who also the Higher Education Minister of the state, this is the second time that he won as the president of OOA. Among other office-bearers, two vice-presidents (Jagamohan Patnaik, Pratap Satpathy) and four council members (Arabinda Kumar Das, Kartikeswar Pradhan, Bijaya Kumar Rout, M A Alam) were newly elected. Office-bearers: President: Samir Dey: Vice-presidents (6): Pitambar Jena, Kamala Kanta Pandey, Biranchi Narayan Das, Prasant Kumar Acharya, Jagamohan Patnaik, Pratap Satpathy: General secretary: Asirbad Behera: Joint-secretaries (2): Manoranjan Mohanty, Ashok Kumar Sahu: Treasurer: Adhip Das: Council members (11): Aswini Kumar Patnaik, Arabinda Kumar Das, Anup Kumar Patra, Nalini Kumar Das, Rabi Sankar Pratihari, Binod Chandra Dash, Rabindra Kumar Parida, Rusinath Sahu, Kartikeswar Pradhan, Bijaya Kumar Rout, M A Alam.