Tabith Awal has become the most important figure in the country's football after getting elected as the president of the Bangladesh Football Federation following a landslide victory in the BFF polls on Saturday.
The two-time former BFF vice-president, a politician and businessman, Tabith cast 123 votes while his lone competitor for the post, AFM Mizanur Rahman, a grassroots level organiser from Dinajpur, secured only five, as 128 councillors out of a total of 133 exercised their voting rights.
Out of 46 candidates contesting for 21 posts in the elections, only Imrul Hasan, the committee's incumbent vice-president, was elected unopposed to the position of senior vice-president.
Naser Shahriar Jahedi (155 votes), Wahid Uddin Chowdhury (108 votes), Sabbir Ahmed Aref (90 votes), and Fahad Mohammad Ahmed Karim (87 votes) have been elected as vice-presidents in their first attempts.
Two former footballers, Syed Rummon Bin Wali Sabbir (66 votes) and Shafiqul Islam Manik (42 votes), ran for the vice-president posts but lost in the elections.
A total of 37 candidates competed for 15 membership positions, and voting counting for the membership positions was still going on at the time of filing this report.聽
The election, which was originally scheduled for October 3, was held following the Annual General Meeting of the BFF at the same venue on the day.
The councillors cast their votes from 2:00pm to 6:00pm to elect the new committee, comprised of one president, one senior vice-president, four vice presidents, and 15 members for a four-year tenure.
During the AGM, councillors rejected a budget of Tk 61 crore, 52 lakh, 81 thousand, and 20 for the fiscal year 2025.
The election process, led by the three-member commission chaired by Mezbah Uddin, took place twenty days after the election schedule was announced on October 7.
With this election, Kazi Salahuddin's 16-year reign came to an end. The legendary former footballer became president of the BFF for the first time in 2008, and on September 14, he announced not to contest for the fifth term.
