Director RK Selvamani has been appointed president of the Tamil Film Directors’ Association. He secured 1386 of 1503 votes that were cast, beating director Vidyasagar who stood for president opposite him.
Others in Selvamani’s team include KS Ravikumar and Ravi Maria for vice presidents, RV Udhayakumar for general secretary. Perarasu for treasurer, and Sundar C, Ekambavanan, Lingusamy and Chitra Lakshmanan for joint secretaries.
The elections were held between 7am to 4pm yesterday in Chennai, and the counting of votes started at 4pm. It was presided by the Madras High Court appointed retired judge Senthil Nathan.
The union has 2400 directors and assistant directors as members, out of which 2045 are eligible to vote, but only 1503 members took part in elections. Directors Bharathiraja, Vekat Prabhu, Seeman, Shankar, Ramesh Khanna, SJ Suryah, Ponvannan, Selvaraghavan, Samuthirakani and others were seen casting their votes.
Vice-president KS Ravikumar spoke to the media after elections and said that the Directors Union building construction, initiated by Selvamani, was the reason for his team’s sweeping victory. “It was constructed on the association land and we would not have achieved it if not for Selvamani.”
The upcoming 50th anniversary of the Directors’ Union will be their first major event after they take up the post.
Director Bharathiraja was initially chosen as the president of the union unanimously by the members during the general body meeting that took place in Kamala Theatre on June 10. However, he stepped down from the post in less than a month and issued a statement saying there must be democratic elections. Yesterday, he said, “This is the first time there has been a controversy around the elections. I wished for the elections to happen as per democratic norms, and I’m glad it is happening so.”
Recommended
After he stepped down from the post, director Ameer and SP Jananathan had filed nominations for the post of president along with Karu Pazhaniappan, Samuthirakani, Balaji Sakthivel, Daya Senthilkumar, SP Jananathan, Aslam and others for secretary, treasurer, vice president and joint secretary. They all later withdrew their nominations saying that Jananathan and Ameer’s candidature was unjustly rejected by the election officer because Ameer endorsed for Jananathan. Jananthan told Silverscreen that they don’t plan on taking the matter to court as they want elections to happen as scheduled.