People's Democracy

DELHI

 

DUJ Elects First Woman President

 

THE panel led by Ms Sujata Madhok and Shailendra Kumar Pande has clean-swept the DUJ elections this year. It will be noted that the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ), a militant body that has fought many struggles on issues concerning the scribes community and registered successes in several of them, went to the polls on September 11.

 

The other panel in contest was led by Madan Singh and Anant Mittal.

 

This is the first time that the DUJ has got a woman as its president. Earlier a woman was elected its general secretary during the Emergency.

 

While the new president of the organisation is Ms Sujata Madhok, who has since long been associated with the DUJ in various capacities and is convenor of its Gender Equity Council, S K Pande, senior journalist and erstwhile DUJ president for several terms, is now its general secretary.

 

Dinesh Chandra is now the vice president of the organisation while Aroop Sen, Mohd Shamim Siddiqui and Ms T K Rajalakshmi have been elected to the three secretary posts. Amit Prakash Singh of the same panel is now the new DUJ treasurer.

 

Apart from the office bearer positions, the panel led by Sujata Madhok and S K Pande has won all the Executive Committee positions too, without exception. Harish Damodaran, Iftikhar Gilani, Sanjay Thapa and Vinay Kumar have been elected to the four EC positions in the English Category, while four positions in the Hindi Category have gone to Bhagawati Prasad Dobhal, Mahesh Darpan, Ms Mrinal Ballari and Ms Parul Sharma.

 

Each of these candidates bagged 70 to 75 per cent of the votes polled.

 

Earlier, Vijay Saluja, Ms Geetashri, Ms Anjali Deshpande and Ms Aruna Singh were elected unopposed to the four General Category posts; and Amrit Mohan, Ms Sujata Mathur and Sheikh Mansoor Ahmed were elected unopposed to the three positions in the News Agencies Category. Similarly, Raza Haider, Abu Nauman and Naresh Nadeem had been elected unopposed in the Urdu Category. All of these belonged to the same panel.

 

One seat in the Urdu Category remains vacant because of the last-minute withdrawal of his nomination by A Hayee Khan. Instead, he contested for the vice president’s position on the other panel, but lost to Dinesh Chandra.

 

Madan Singh and Anant Mittal, who contested for the president and general secretary positions respectively, have offered their cooperation to the new team and assured their participation in the future struggles.

The DUJ is a constituent of the Indian Journalists Union (IJU) and Delhi sends 11 members to the IJU National Council, ten out of which have already been elected unopposed. They are Ms Sujata Madhok, Shailendra Kumar Pande, Dinesh Chandra, Ms T K Rajalakshmi, Ms Geetashri, Ms Mrinal Ballari, Amit Prakash Singh, Ms Aruna Singh, Sunil Kumar Mehta and Arvind Upreti.

 

While the DUJ president this time is a woman, women constitute a good chunk of the executive committee as well. Moreover, half of those elected from Delhi for the IJU National Council are woman. Significantly, with this the DUJ has become the first mediapersons’ organisation in South Asia to elect 50 per cent of women to a national level organisation. (INN)