CHICAGO: The Federation of Indian Associations (FIA) Chicago headed by Keerthi Ravoori, held its annual elections Sunday December 7 at North Shore Banquet Hall in Chicago and elected its new executive team for the year 2014-15.
Dr Inderjit Patel was unanimously chosen as the new President. The elections for the post of Executive Vice President and three positions for Vice Presidents were held in a democratic fashion while other office bearers were declared unanimously elected.
Iftekhar Sharef, Chair FIA Trustee Board, expressed huge satisfaction observing that the new FIA team was the outcome of “the peaceful elections” and that he would request the winning team to work with everyone include who lost by few votes. “At the end of day we all are one family, winning losing should not matter. Let’s work together with same spirit that we have been exhibiting over the years,” he said in a statement.
The following are the elected office-bearers:
1. Dr. Inderjit Patel – President – Unanimously elected
2. Ms. Vandana Valia – Executive VP – Elected
3. Harish Kolasani – Secretary – Unanimous
4. Dr. Ram Gajella – VP – Elected thru contest
5. Babu Varma – VP – Elected thru contest
6. Kanti N. Patel – VP – Elected thru contest.
7. Shaurin Mehta – Jt. Secretary – Unanimous
8. Ajeet Singh – Treasurer – Elected unanimously
9. Jatin Patel – JT. Treasurer – Elected unanimously.
Offering congratulations to the new team, Iftekhar Shareef thanked all members who came out and voted for the winning team.
In a talk to this paper, he said that FIA stood for certain principles and that it should be deemed highly inappropriate on the part of any body to set up another organization and still call it FIA. This amounts to misleading the community and its needs to be stopped immediately. He urged ethnic Indian media to project before the community the real FIA.
He told this paper that his FIA has been there for over two and half decades while the other is masquerading as FIA but is not the real one, “We have not fully exhausted out legal options and we would be constrained to take legal action if the other group does not desist from using FIA name,” he said.
His appeal to the ethnic Indian media reads as follows:
“It is our humble request to avoid those organizations that use dubious methods in forming them. Such an example is the fake FIA group who resorted to establish another FIA by manipulating the original FIA name by one word. These are the same individuals who were representing and were part of the original FIA formed in 1980’s. When these individuals lost elections in 2009, they formed another FIA in 2010, manipulating by one word.”
“We will continue to knock on the legal doors to find a solution to resolve the issue. Using FIA name is unethical and illegal. We at the original FIA request media to help protect the integrity of our organization and also other bodies
which face similar situation and problem. Our Media is there to support our community. It is no different than someone using the name of India Tribune to “Indian Tribune”, India Post to “Indian Post”, Hi India to “Hi Indians” , Desi Talk to Desi’s Talk” or similar way of manipulating names. Looking forward to work with you all. Jai Hind”
Sunil Shah, founding president of the rival FIA group, said that his organization is duly registered with the concerned State authorities and that it has been rendering yeoman service to the community for the past three years or more.
Ramesh Soparawala
India Post News Service
