Misa Sawdagar was elected president and Monowar Hossain Dipjol was elected general secretary for 2024-2026 term in the Bangladesh Film Artistes’ Association election held on the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation premises on Friday.
The BFAA election commission chairman Khorshed Alam Khosru officially announced the results on Saturday morning.
A total of 48 candidates, including six independent candidates, contested against 21 posts in the election in two panels, namely, Misa Sawdagar-Monowar Hossain Dipjol and Mahmud Koli-Nipun Akhter.
Misa Sawdagar and Mahmud Koli contested for the post of president while Monowar Hossain Dipjol, Nipun Akhter and Srabon Shah contested for the post of general secretary.
Misa Sawdagar bagged 265 votes while Mahmud Koli got 170 votes. Besides, Monowar Hossain Dipjol bagged 225 votes, Nipun Akhter bagged 209 votes and Srabon Shah bagged one vote.
Although 570 artistes were eligible to cast their votes, 475 votes were cast. According to the election commission, 41 ballots were declared invalid and 434 were counted as valid ballots.
Only three candidates won in the election from Koli-Nipun panel while 18 candidates won from Misa-Dipjol panel and no independent candidates won in the election.
Before announcing the results, Khosru expressed his joy over the presence of candidates from both panels during the result announcement.
He said that the environment of the election was very different from the elections of past few years.
Khosru hoped that film artistes would remain united in the future.
Misa thanked all artistes for showing friendly attitude to each other during the election. ‘Film artistes will work together for the development of local films and the industry,’ said Misa.
Dipjol said that division among artistes was not expected and they should be united.
Nipun said that she was honoured to have so much love from the film artistes.
In the Misa-Dipjol panel, DA Tayeb and Masum Parvez Rubel contested for vice-presidents, Arman for assistant general secretary, Joy Chowdhury for organisational secretary, Alexander Bo for international affairs secretary, Jaki Alomgir for office and publicity secretary, Don for culture and sports secretary and Komol for treasurer posts while in the Koli-Nipun panel, Amit Hasan and Danny Sidak contested for vice-presidents, Bappy Shah for assistant general secretary, Anjana Rahman for organisational secretary, Maruf Akib for international affairs secretary, Kabila for office and publicity secretary, Mamnun Emon for culture and sports secretary and Azad Khan for treasurer posts.
The newly elected vice-presidents DA Tayeb got 234 votes and Masum Parvez Rubel got 231 votes while assistant-general secretary Arman got 237 votes, organisational secretary Joy Chowdhury bagged 250 votes, international affairs secretary Alexander Bo bagged 286 votes, office and publicity secretary Jaki Alomgir got 245 votes, culture and sports secretary Mamnun Emon bagged 235 votes and treasurer Komol got 231 votes.
Besides, executive council members, namely, Poly bagged 220 votes, Sony Rahman got 230 votes, Ali Raj got 239 votes, Rozina got 243 votes, Shuchorita got 228 votes, Subrata got 216 votes, Dilara Yasmin got 218 votes, Shahnur got 245 votes, Nana Shah got 210 votes, Ratna Kabir got 263 votes and Chunnu bagged 248 votes.
The BFAA election was held amid festive mood and tight security on the BFDC premises on Friday.
The voting was held from 9:30am to 5:30pm with a one-hour break from 1:00pm to 2:00pm.
Khorshed Alam Khosru was the chairman while AJ Rana and BH Nishan were the members of the election commission while Shamsul Alam was the chairman of the appeal board.
Candidates can apply to challenge the results to the appeal board on April 21.
