Puta gets new president, general secy

patna: science college principal jagannath thakur was declared elected president of the patna university teachers’ association (puta). amar nath singh of history department was re-elected general secretary of the association. while thakur defeated his rival dharam shila prasad of the magadh mahila college by a margin of 78 votes, singh defeated his rival balmiki kumar sinha of the mathematics department by a margin of 83 votes.thakur secured 283 votes whereas prasad got 205 votes. singh secured 286 votes, while his rival sinha got 203 votes. the candidates for both the offices of president as well as general secretary were locked in straight contests. the elections to the various offices of puta were held in peaceful and cordial atmosphere at the historic wheeler senate house on saturday. more than 90 per cent of pu teachers, including a sizeable number of women, turned up and exercised their franchise. chief returning officer shreedhar prasad singh conducted the elections magnificently. m o siddiqui of the botany department and m k mallik of the institute of public administration were elected vice-presidents by securing 243 and 165 votes respectively. there were four other contestants, namely, girija kumari of the patna women’s college, anil kumar and vivekanand mishra of the science college, and n k p sinha of the b n college in the fray. b n tiwary of the science college and anil kumar sahni of the bihar college of engineering were elected joint secretaries by securing 177 and 168 votes respectively. other candidates in the fray included ashok kumar of the sanskrit department and surendra kumar singh, r k sinha and l n ray of the science college. n k pandey of the vanijya mahavidyalaya was re-elected treasurer of the puta unopposed. though the elections were fought between two teams, the voters did not favour any one team in totality. while they elected the president belonging to one team, the general secretary was elected from the rival team. both the teams got 50 per cent success in the elections. the results indicate that the teachers in general did rise above narrow considerations and selected their leaders on merit, said a newly elected member of the puta executive, sudhir kumar srivastava. congratulating the teachers the newly elected puta president said that the association would strive hard to ensure payment of four months’ salaries to the teachers for the period of their last strike. implementation of revised ugc scales of pay for all category of teachers would also receive top priority, he added.