All Nepal Football Association (Anfa) president Karma Tsering Sherpa on Sunday elected the member of the newly-former South West Asian Football Federation (Swaff) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The Swaff elected a 10-member committee for a four years under the presidency of Adel Ezzat, the president of Saudi Arabia Football Federation. Along with Sherpa, vice president Bir Bahadur Khadka and general secretary Indra Man Tuladhar had represented Nepal in the Swaff general assembly.

The Swaff is a new regional association of South and West Asian countries “created to improve the quality of football in the region”. Altogether 14 countries including all seven members of the South Asian Football Federation (Saff)— Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka—are the members of the newly-formed body. Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen are the other members of the Swaff.     

Mohammed Shaweed of Maldives was elected as the senior vice president while Subrata Dutta of India and Abdullah Al Junaibi of the United Arab Emirates were picked up as vice presidents. Mahfuza Akhter (Bangladesh), Anura De Silva (Sri Lanka), Karma Tsering Sherpa (Nepal), Alshikh Ali Khalifah (Bahrain) and Fahad Al Hamlan (Kuwait) are complete the new Swaff committee. A quote for a female member yet to be filled.

Some media reports recently speculated that the birth of Swaff came into fore due to dispute in the West Asian Football Federation between Jordanian president Prince Ali bin Al Hussian and Saudi Arabian authorities after the former turned down offers to shift West Asian Football Federation headquarters from Amman to Jeddah.

Other reports speculated the new alliance has been initiated due to political conflict between Saudi Arab and Qatar besides motives of undermining status of AFC president Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa and former Fifa vice-president Prince Ali bin Al-Hussain, who challenged former president Sepp Blatter in the Fifa presidential election in 2015.