TAFI national elections in limbo

The Travel Agents Federation of India’s (TAFI) national elections that had been planned for January have now been indefinitely postponed due to an unprecedented glitch in one of its chapter elections.

Hazel Jain

As per the association rules, the Travel Agents Federation of India was to hold its national elections after completing the same for all its 11 chapters. However, its Madhya Pradesh Chapter is yet to conduct its elections, leaving the national elections for TAFI in limbo. Sharing more details on this is Pradip Lulla, Acting President and Vice President, TAFI, who says, “We have completed 10 chapter elections so far in January 2021.The last one, which is the Madhya Pradesh chapter election, has been delayed. It was to be held on February 3, 2021 because of a technical problem of the chairman not being available. However, now the matter is sub judice (under a judge). The person who was disqualified has gone to court. So now, whatever the court decides, that is what the chapter will have to do.”

The last term’s chapter chairman was TK Jose and the secretary was Hariom Jhunjhunwala. When the nominations for the chapter were filed on January 25, 2021, there were three names for the post of chairman – TK Jose, Shailandre Khare and Nitendra Khare. On investigating, the forms of both Shailandre Khare and Nitendra Khare were disqualified.

Lulla explains, “Basically, the Returning Officer disqualified two candidates because the procedure was wrong and they had proposed each other in their forms for the same positions. So then, one of them went to court with this. The court has now asked them to sort it out amongst themselves. We have tried to pacify them and asked them to come to a settlement amicably. But, they are saying it is sub judice and the court must decide. So we can have the national elections only once this has been settled, or if the person who has gone to court withdraws his case. For TAFI, there is no court jurisdiction, it is under the Registrar. The person who went to court should have actually approached the national committee for a solution.” Lulla added that the national committee will announce the nominees and the national election date soon.

Chapter alert!

The court hearing for the Madhya Pradesh chapter election case was scheduled for February 25, 2021 in Indore at the time of going to press.