Saudi Gazette report JEDDAH — Karnataka Expatriates elected new committee during their general body meeting recently. Outgoing President Roshan Rodrigues opened the meeting and expressed his condolence on the sudden demise of our former president of India late Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam. A two-minute silence was observed by all the members to honor and pay homage to the departed soul and pray to Almighty to rest his soul in peace. The group also expressed deep sorrow and grief on the Makkah incident where over 100 pilgrims lost their lives, and hey prayed for them, and hoped that the departed souls would be given a place in Jannah. Vishwanath Karkare and Ilyas Momin conducted the session and unanimously all members of the forum expressed their satisfaction, confidence and trust on the abilities, capabilities and performance of the last year's team under the dynamic leadership of Rodrigues, and decided to re-elect him for a second tenure. Rodrigues was elected for the second term as the president of the forum and soon after the announcement of result, he conveyed his thanks to the members for reposing a strong trust in him and for giving him another opportunity to serve the forum for one more year. He assured all that he will put his best efforts, strategies and resources forward to take the forum to a higher level. The names and positions of elected office bearers are as follows: Roshan Rodrigues president, Syed Nasir Khursheed and Habeeb Rahman, vice presidents, Aijaz Ahmed, general secretary, Syed Haseebuddin, treasurer, Yashwant Amin and Peter Mascarances, joint secretaries, and meeting coordinator Mohammed Arif, joint treasurer, Krish Jangal, IT coordinator, Dadapeer Hayath, joint IT coordinator, Niaz Ahmed, press secretary, Sabu Chandran, sports secretary, Arif Abed, joint sports secretary, Mohammed Saifuddin, cultural secretary, Mohammed Kaleem Mohsin Khan and Syed Shakeel Ahmed, joint cultural secretaries. Ilyas Momin, Faizee Sheikh and Mukkaram Khan, membership coordinators. Mohammed Mansoor, Shaikh Saud, Dr. Ashfaque Maniyar, Mohammed Saheb, Alok Pattar, Manzoor Ahmed, Mohammed Saleem Khalifa, Imtiaz Ahmed and Nasir Jamal Shah were elected as executive members. Members expressed their happiness on Rodrigues accepting the president's position for the second term and shared their thoughts and experiences. They said Rodrigues has won the hearts and minds of the members of the forum through his simplicity, dedication, hard work and professional behavior and he has always encouraged and motivated members to come forward and participate in the decision making process and shown tremendous respect to all the members and follows the ethics of forum i.e. “collective decision” and advocated that united approach is always fruitful, and one of the important tools for the success and growth of any forum or a civil society. Newly elected General Secretary Aijaz Ahmed described him as a good listener and created space for the members to come and speak their minds, has developed a very healthy and friendly environment and created a culture of “One Team One Forum” under his leadership. Habib Rahman, newly elected vice president, described KNRI Forum as a unit of family members where all members from different parts of Karnataka work together for the betterment of poor and needy people. Outgoing general secretary and newly elected Vice President Syed Nasir Khursheed expressed deep sense of appreciation towards all the executive committee members for their continuous support for the activities carried out by the forum. He requested all the members to render similar support to new executive committee for getting good results from them. He also thanked founding members of KNRI forum Vasu Manchegowda and Sri Harsha, who have resettled in Bangalore now, for their tremendous support to the forum in India. Dr. Maniyar and Dadapeer who are the newly elected executive committee members, expressed their pleasure in becoming the integral part of the forum. Dr. Maniyar expressed his pleasure and said he has joined the forum because of its vision, mission and objectives. The objective that attracted and brought me closer to this organization is that the forum's understanding of the pain of the KNRI parents and fighting for the educational rights of the NRI children to get admission on merit basis in the professional courses, back home in Karnataka through Common Entrance Test (CET). Executive member Shaikh Saud and membership coordinator Mukkram Khan further elaborated and shared their ideas, knowledge and options on how to achieve success in this direction. They said we should strongly put forth this case to the government, and to garner a wider support of KNRI across the Gulf countries, KNRI Saudi Arabia should play a leading role in communicating and convincing other KNRI Forums to join hands, so that a memorandum could be submitted to the government, informing that this demand has been pending for a long time, and a bill needs to be passed in the Karnataka Assembly at the earliest such that our children should get admissions in medical and engineering colleges on merit basis. Rodrigues advised that forum's activities scope to be extended to the new objectives and areas and should work for the betterment of society in a larger scale and proposed that forum should support our Kanadigas in making a clean and better India and our Karnataka state be made free from open defecation by building a large number of public toilets. It was decided in the meeting that 10 toilets would be be built by KNRI Forum in the first phase with the target of building 100 toilets in the coming years, across the districts of Karnataka state. Immediately after the proposal a quick generous response came from Ilyas Momin, who come forward and announced that he would be funding 4 toilets. Faizy and Rodrigues come forward and donated cost of the constructing another two toilets respectively. Shaikh Soud gave the vote of thanks.
