Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) has elected its new Managing Committee for the term 2021-2023, unlike the appeal made by both of the Presidential candidates to vote for the entire team and not to go for the fractured mandate, members of the association have thought otherwise. Voters have elected an equal number of candidates from both sides based on their manifesto and individual performance as a criterion.
I feel it has been a tough election for both the sides but while analysing post- by-post one can find that team ‘Moving Forward’ backed by some of the industry stalwarts and the outgoing president, could not repeat the 2018 performance when it got ten of its 14 candidates elected, whereas the ‘Team for Change’ almost doubled the number of its representatives on key positions in IATO Managing Committee.
Election 2021 has been a big morale booster in a way for the ‘Team for Change’. The team has grown from four to seven seats and secured key positions such as Sr. VP – E. M. Najeeb (177 votes), Treasurer-Sunil Mishra (182 votes) and Joint Secretary- Sanjay Rajdan (172 votes), contesting against Sarabjit Singh (143 votes), Vinay Tyagi (135 votes) and Raj Bajaj (146 votes) respectively with a huge margin. It won three of the five seats in EC Active that included Harish Mathur (182), Tony Marwah (180) and Vishal Yadav (164) and one of the three posts in EC Allied that went to P Vijay Sarathi (213).
At the same time, Lally Mathews of Divine Voyages candidate for the post of President, Lajpat Rai of Lotus Trans Travels candidate for Vice President and Former Hony. Secretary –Rajesh Mudgil of Planet India contesting for the same post, lost the election with a very small margin of 11, 13 and 03 votes respectively.
Whereas the team ‘Moving Forward’ led by Rajiv Mehra of Uday Tours backed by Subhash Goyal – the longest serving President of IATO and most influential industry leader, and outgoing two term President Pronab Sarkar could not match up to the performance achieved in the previous elections. And not only that, senior most, candidates P. S. Duggal and Raj Bajaj have lost to their opponents too.
Nevertheless, if Mathews could not make it to the final tally, he has the opportunity to share his blue prints with the current President Rajiv Mehra in wider industry interest. Same goes with Sarabjit Singh, Lajpat Rai and VinayTyagi who can share their thoughts and ideas with E. M. Najeeb, Ravi Gosain and Sanjay Razdan. If it happens and the current team accepts their proposal and ideas it will be richer indeed, and will mark a new beginning for the industry during post Covid-19 era.
Going beyond the blame game and personal accusations that we all saw recently, the newly elected EC should have a ‘Common Minimum Programme’ to be implemented as both of the teams have several common points in their respective election manifestos and said similar things in different ways.There is no doubt about that there can be a consensus on several points which actually go in favour of the industry at large.
Moving forward, as both of the teams claims to have the same goals – members’ benefit, it is expected that irrespective of all the differences the newly elected EC of IATO will work together with sincerity for the betterment of its members and the industry especially at this point of time when the sector is in unprecedented crisis.
