Anant Bagaitkar and Mohua Chatterjee are new president n secretary general of Press Club of India

The panel led by Anant Bagaitkar – Mohua – Neeraj scored a decisive victory in the prestigious election of the Press Club of India held on 15th December with the final results declared yesterday at the PCI precints by the Club’s election commissioner MMC Sharma in the presence of the candidates and the PCI members.

While Anant Bagaitkar has been elected as the new president of the club inlieu of Gautam Lahiri , Mahua Chatterjee the former treasurer has been elected as the secretary general. Mr. Dinesh Tiwari was already declared the winner as unopposed. The new joint secretary of the club is Sanjay Singh while Neeraj Thakur has been elected as the treasurer.

Supported and backed by the outgoing president Gautam Lahiri and secretary general Vinay Singh, this is the seventh triumph of this panel in succession.

The winning president Anant Bagaitkar who secured 868 votes defeated his nearest rival Nirnimesh Kumar with a margin of 438 votes while another presidential candidate Habib Akhtar who stood third in the contest secured 143 votes.

The secretary general Mohua Chatterjee of Times of India defeated her nearest rival Vinod Kumar Mishra with a margin of 592 votes who bagged merely 249 votes.

The other contestents viz Pradeep Srivastava, Ravi Sharma and Sunil Saurabh got 176, 36 n 90 votes respectively.

In addition to the posts of president, vice president, secretary general, joint secretary and the treasurer, sixteen members to the management committee of PCI were also elected representing various newspapers and news channels.

The victory of the new panel fully supported by the outgoing president Gautam Lahiri speak volumes about the development initiatives undertaken by the outgoing management committee led by him n Vinay Singh.

Among the noted developmental works carried out by the outgoing committee are the complete facelift of the club through renovation n new decor and improving the service of the club. However, its major achievement have been the allotment of 1.61 acre of the prime land for the club’s new building at Rajendra Prasad Road after great n untiring efforts and payment of a huge amount of 5.50 crores to the Urban development ministry arranged and collected with great efforts.

Under the new dispensation we have reasons to hope that the left over works would be undertaken by the new incumbents in letter n spirit.

Congrats to the newly elected president Anant Bagaitkar, Secretary General Mohua Chatterjee and their entire team for taking over the reins with the expectation that this new team would rise to the ocassion n fulfill the aspirations of the valued members of the club.