New Delhi, 24 September 2010 – Paresh Nath, Editor and Publisher, Delhi Press has been elected as the President of Indian Languages Newspapers Association (ILNA) in its 69th AGM. Members from all over the country voted to elect Mr Nath as the President. Speaking in the occasion, the newly elected President said he wanted to fight for the rights of the publishers through the forum of ILNA. While the newspapers have to struggle with many issues like advertisements, Wage Board and newsprint, amendment in the Press Registration Law is also posing new threat.

More than 130 ILNA members attended the 69th AGM of ILNA held on 23 September 2010 at New Delhi’s Indian Islamic Cultural Centre. Election of the office bearers also took place during the meeting.

President Paresh Nath and General Secretary Ravi Kumar Bishnoi, while highlighting the past achievements of ILNA, stated that for the first time DAVP has started placing advertisement in regional newspapers on the occasion of national festivals. This was made possible only because of the steps taken by ILNA.

Treasurer Chandrakant Bhave placed the income and expenditure and balance sheet statements before the members. The treasurer informed that in its 69 years of history, the previous year saw the highest generation of income from subscriptions. Among the various proposals agreed upon by the AGM are the opening of ILNA committees in different cities and towns, opening an office of ILNA in Delhi and issuing of recognition certificates to the advertising agencies from ILNA.

During the discussion, General Secretary Ravi Kumar Bishnoi said that during the past 2 years, ILNA has made tremendous progress and emerged as a powerful national organization. He also presented a proposal to elect Paresh Nath as president again and, if required, proposed amendments be made to the rules of ILNA Association. In an open house, members exchanged various opinions on the proposal and after a few rounds of discussion, Rule 12 was amended unanimously.

For the posts that were vacant in the Executive Committee, following members were elected. Chaudhary Yashpal Singh, Sh. Sanjay Gupta, Sh. Prakash Pohare, Sh. Girish Aggarwal, Sh. Vivek Gupta, Sh. Devendra Sharma, Sh. Deenbandhu Chaudhary, Sh. Anant Nath, and Sh. Kirit Bhai Khamar. Former president Vijay Bandoria and Sunil Dang acted as Returning Officers.

The newly constituted Executive Committee elected Paresh Nath (Saras Salil) as President, Govindlal Vora (Amrit Sandesh) and Arvind Chopra (Punjab Kesri) as Vice Presidents, Ravi Kumar Bishnoi (Kesar Khushboo Times), Prakash Pohare (Deshonnati) and Vivek Gupta (Sanmarg) as General Secretaries and Chandrakant Bhave (Dauk) as Treasurer.

The newly constituted executive also elected Dr. Lalit Bhardwaj, KC Bishnoi, Dr. Ravindra Kumar, Digamber Kushwaha, Vipin Mohan Sharma, Krishna J. Nagpal, B.M. Sharma and Lubna Asif as the co-opted members. Besides them, Rajshekhar Koti, from Karnataka, Balram Swati from Andhra Pradesh, Bala Sahib from Maharashtra, Rajshekhar Nair from Kerala, Shiva Aggrawal and Prakash Aggarwal from Nagpur, Naganna S. from Banagalore, Ashok Navaratna from Aligarh and Sanyam Maggu from Meerut were elected as Special standing Invitees members.

Executive also unanimously appointed Gaurav Dhama, a Supreme Court lawyer, as the legal adviser (Honorary) for ILNA. ILNA members can approach him for any court matter related to publishing. The meeting was also attended by Past President Sh.Pratap B.Shah, Sunil Dang, Rajendra Sharma, and Vijay Bandoria and also spoke about ILNA. Rajiv Vashista, Ankit Bishnoi, Gagan Bishnoi, SM Asif and Santosh Bharatiya were also attened the meeting.

ILNA, an umbrella organization of various Indian language publications from different states of the country, is now expanding its frontier. Now crossing geographical boundaries of India, ILNA has members in foreign countries also. Three Indian languages newspapers being published from New Jersey have taken ILNA membership. These new members are ‘Gujarat Times’, ‘Gujarat Darpan’ and ‘Tirranga’ all published from New Jersey.