GUWAHATI, March 7 - Former general secretary of Guwahati Press Club (GPC) Nava Thakuria has approached the court seeking its intervention to stall the GPC�s election process, which has started after 17 years. The court will hear the plea on March 11.
The GPC is going for polls on March 12 and Thakuria, who was elected to the post of general secretary way back in 2003, never deemed it fit to hold any election after that, for reasons best known to the members of the erstwhile committee.
Despite several memorandums seeking holding of elections were submitted to Thakuria by the members of the club from time to time (the latest one was served on February 8, 2020), Thakuria along with the other office bearers had turned a deaf ear to all the pleas and the members of the erstwhile executive committee remained defiant all throughout.
After all efforts to convince the executive committee to hold the elections in a democratic manner failed to yield any result in the last 17 years, an special general body meeting of the general members of the GPC was convened on February 20 on the Club premises. It was unanimously decided in the meeting to dissolve the committee which not only failed to hold any election in the last 17 years, but also refrained from convening a single Annual General Meeting (AGM) which is in gross violation of the Constitution of the GPC.
The meeting, which was attended by several senior journalists including more than 200 member journalists, also expressed shock that the office bearers after being elected in 2003 could not even hold an executive meeting in nearly last two decades.
What also drew criticism from the members of the Club was the fact that Thakuria and other officer bearers of the erstwhile committee had abstained from maintaining any account of the club and the official bank account too had become non-operational. However, it is clearly mentioned in the Constitution of the GPC that any transaction involving over Rs 100 has to be done through bank.
The meeting also decided to constitute an interim committee and entrusted it with the responsibility to look after the day-to-day functioning of the Club till the executive committee is elected.
Although, Thakuria through a press statement, welcomed the resolutions of the special general meeting, he, after a few days, allegedly tried to destroy documents of the Club by setting them on fire, after which the interim committee and the audit committee (formed to audit the accounts of the club from 2002 to till date) had to intervene.
Thakuria has filed the case before the Munsif Court against the interim committee, the election committee and the presiding officer, alleging that the voters� list of the Club is illegal and journalists of the electronic media cannot be the general members of the GPC.
