Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Sept 27: Advocate Ravinder Kumar Raina was elected president of All State Kashmiri Pandit Conference (ASKPC) the parent organization of Kashmiri Pandits, in its elections held here, today.
Mr Raina was announced elected to this old body of KPs by Returning Officer A K Raina under whose supervision the elections were held.
Mr Raina defeated his nearest rival Satish Bhat (Pajnoo) by a margin of 239 votes. Mr Raina got 404 votes out of 686 polled votes while Mr Pajnoo got 165 votes.
The other contenders including Vijay Kumar Kashkari and Mohan Lal Mantoo (Sopori) got 103 and 10 votes respectively.
The election was held at Surya Bhawan Paloura from 9 am to 3pm and out of 1786 registered voters of the organization only 686 turned up for polling.
The ASKPC being the oldest socio-political organization of Kashmiri Pandits has been constituted in 1931 with veteran jurist Jia Lal Kilam as its first president.
Later it was led by veteran KP leaders including Raja Hargopal Koul who was also a veteran journalist by profession, Kashyap Bandhu a veteran freedom fighter and social activist, Shiv Narayan Fotedar the first Chairman of State Legislative Council, Prem Nath Gassi, Shamboo Nath Kachroo, Justice J N Bhat, J L Koul Jalali, Dr S N Peshin, Harji Lal Raina, father of community A N Vaishnavi and Hira Lal Chatta. Both Mr Vaishnavi and Chatta were diehard RSS activists and played a great role during the exile of the community.
After the sudden demise of Mr Chatta, last year, senior most vice president of ASKPC, R K Raina was nominated as its president. Taking a bold step Mr Raina however announced the elections in the organizations which had become over due and there was a lot of pressure from the community of holding elections to the parent body in a democratic way as the elections to the organization were not held for last four decades.
The Returning Officer A K Raina while declaring elections said that the present president has been elected for a term of two years and hence forth the elections to the organization will be held after every two years as per its constitution.
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