Election results at IMA Bareilly revealed unprecedented victories, with a mere of four votes being a deciding factor for the presidential seat, and the association electing the first female treasurer in its history. Here’s a report by Mushahid Rafat.
BAREILLY | In a historic turn of events, IMA Bareilly witnessed one of the closest contests for the post of the president as Dr. D.P. Gangwar won the election by a thin margin of four votes. Dr. Anshu Agarwal (Surgeon) won handsomely by 195 votes to become the secretary. In another first, Dr. Shalini Maheshwari won the contest to become the first female treasurer of the association. The contest for the post of the Public Relations Officer (PRO) was won by Dr. Kamendra Singh by just three votes.
IMA Bareilly is considered as one of the most active and agile chapters of the Indian Medical Association. The Chapter has a total membership of 967 out of which 791 turned up to vote for their favorite candidates on Sunday. It was for the first time in the history of the association when four doctors ran for the post of the president. Earlier, mostly three doctors used to file their nominations but at least one of them used to withdraw her/his name turning the elections into a bipolar contest.
However, this year Dr. D.P. Gangwar, Dr. Himanshu Agarwal, Dr. Rajkumari Mittal and Dr. Ratan Pal Singh filed their nominations. Efforts were made to convince at least two of them to withdraw their names but it was not destined to be as all four wanted to go full throttle. Eventually, all four of them contested the election.
When the results were declared at around 08:15 PM, one of 791 votes was declared invalid. Dr. D.P. Gangwar was declared the winner with 237 votes. He beat his nearest candidate Dr. Himanshu Agarwal a margin of just four votes. Dr. Rajkumari Mittal garnered 203 votes while Dr. Ratan Pal Singh had to be content with 117 votes. The contest for the post of secretary turned out to be rather one-sided with Dr. Anshu Agarwal’s tally reaching 490 votes. Dr. Gyanendra Lal Gupta, the only other contender, got 295 votes.
Dr. Shalini Maheshwari won the election for the post of treasurer with a comfortable margin of 48 votes. She got 417 votes while the only other candidate Dr. Sujoy Mukherjee got 369 votes. It is noteworthy that Dr. Shalini Maheshwari has turned out to be the first female doctor to become the treasurer of IMA Bareilly. The contest for the post of the PRO witnessed a closed fight as Dr. Kamendra Singh beat Dr. Ritu Rajeev by just three votes. Dr. Kamendra got 395 votes while Dr. Ritu Rajeev got 392.
The entire process of the election was supervised by a seven-member committee chaired by Dr. Rajesh Kumar (Pediatrician). The incumbent president Dr. R.K. Singh, past presidents Dr. Vimal Bhardwaj, Dr. Vinod Pagrani, Dr. Rajeev Goel and Dr. Manoj Agarwal (Orthopedics) along with the chairman of the Bylaws Committee Dr. Anshu Agarwal (ENT) were the members of the election committee.