In the organisational elections of the All India Organisation of Chemists & Druggists (AIOCD) scheduled for September 5, the members of chemists associations from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, supported by a few more states, have decided to support the candidature of KE Prakash, president of the Karnataka Chemists and Druggists Association (KCDA) for the post of national president.  He will be fighting against the incumbent president JS Shinde.  P K Singh is the candidate for the post of general secretary.

The decision to support Prakash has come up in the wake of internal problems in the All Kerala Chemists & Druggists Association (AKCDA) following orders of penal actions from Competition Commission of India (CCI) against the state body.  Earlier Karnataka and Tamil Nadu branches were planning to support the candidature of the former president of AIOCD, AN Mohan for president post. Mohan is currently the president of AKCDA.

According to sources from  AIOCD, the election for national office-bearers is slated for September 5 at Hotel Hayat in Pune. They said there is no chance for a tough fight because the affiliated bodies of major states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa,  Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal, Kerala, Telangana, Bihar, Seemandhra, West Bengal, Orissa and Jharkhand are unanimously supporting the official panel led by Shinde.

Last week of June, a meeting of office-bearers from Tamil Nadu, Telengana, Pondicherry and Karnataka was held in Coimbatore and passed a resolution to field AN Mohan, as presidential candidate in the election. Sources claimed that the meeting was attended by 25 members from six southern states. However, the later developments of in-fighting occurred in the state organisation in Kerala and the court cases forced the factional leaders to change their mind and field KE Prakash.

Earlier, while speaking to Pharmabiz over telephone, JS Shinde had said that he would continue in the post of president until his tenure expired and contest the election for the same post again. He has now been nominated to the State Legislative Council by the governor of Maharashtra for a period of six years.