NAYAK PAUDEL

KATHMANDU, MARCH 26

Until Thursday evening, confusion surrounded the ordinary congress cum election of the All Nepal Football Association scheduled for Friday in Jhapa.

On Wednesday, the National Sports Council had suspended ANFA for three months for forcing its way through for the early election despite warnings from the state authorities.

Many ANFA officials and voting representatives were found to have reached Jhapa on Thursday for Friday’s election.

Meanwhile, several individuals with voting rights alongside candidates for different posts objected to the election and announced their withdrawal on Thursday.

Several clubs representing the A, B and C Divisions, alongside members of different district associations, organised a joint press conference in Kathmandu on Thursday afternoon. They said they would not be part of the election of an association which has been suspended by Nepal’s sports governing body.

“We cannot participate in the election after ANFA’s suspension,” said Dirgha Bahadur KC, one of the presidential candidates, in the joint press conference. “There are many candidates who will not participate.”

KC added, “I am a presidential candidate. But I still do not know where and when exactly in Jhapa on Friday the election will take place. I even asked the ANFA Election Committee’s Member-Secretary Lokendra Oli, but he also expressed innocence.”

KC was the only opponent competing with the sitting ANFA President Pankaj Bikram Nembang for the main position.

There were other withdrawals as well.

“I do not want to be part of an election that is mired in controversies,” Pema Dolma Lama, one of the 10 candidates for the four vice-president posts, wrote in a letter to the ANFA Election Committee.

Lama is an executive committee member in Nemang’s current team. She is also the first woman footballer to score an international goal for Nepal.

As per the list of voting representatives decided on March 13, there were 88 voters.

There are 50 district associations under ANFA that have a voting right in the central election. Of them, 46 were only listed in the voting list.

The 14 A-Division clubs have one voting right each. Similarly, B-Division clubs have 11 voting rights, and C-Division clubs have nine. Four of the top teams in the President League, alongside associations of players, women, referees and coaches have one voting right each.

“If you become part of this election, you will be remembered for being part of a black day in Nepali football,” Karma Tsering Sherpa, president of Himalayan Sherpa Club, said in the joint press conference. Sherpa was the voting representative from Himalayan Sherpa, an A-Division club.

Similarly, Upendra Man Singh, president and voting representative from B-Division’s Madhyapur Youth Association, said, “I cannot be part of this unconstitutional election as ANFA is under suspension from the state.”

While reservations remained, several things were uncertain: Would ANFA organise the election anyhow, as they had backing from FIFA and AFC?

However, ANFA stayed silent, not responding to the suspension as well.

It was only at 7:01pm that the footballing body finally broke the silence, posting a notice on its social media.

“The election scheduled for March 27 has been postponed until further notice after receiving NSC’s March 25 suspension letter through the ANFA Secretariat on March 26,” reads the notice signed by Oli, the committee’s coordinator Ramchandra Gautam and member Samjhana KC.

It is the third time that ANFA’s election has been postponed.

It was in January that ANFA’s executive committee, which was elected in June 2022 for a four-year term, first decided to hold the election in Jhapa on February 11, at least four months before their tenure ended.

Interference from the NSC and Patan High Court then saw the election being postponed twice, and the latest date decided on was March 27.

“No institution is allowed to extend its tenure beyond the rules, but it can shorten its term if it chooses to do so,” Kiran Rai, ANFA’s general secretary, defended the early election in a press conference on January 3.

However, there are different angles to it.

“Around 22-23 district presidents would have been new if ANFA followed the ethics,” said Sherpa, who is also the former president of ANFA. “And they fear they will lose if new faces come to the district associations.”

The district branches of ANFA that elected Nembang and the team in 2022 still have the same executive committee. Critics, as well as the NSC, have been demanding that Nembang’s ANFA hold its election only after a fresh mandate at the district level.

However, the election postponement does not solve the problems. It has been feared that FIFA and AFC will soon take serious action against Nepali football by suspending the footballing body, citing third-party interference.