Manmohan Khanna won the election by 168 votes against Pallav Mukherjee. This time around, 60 per cent of the people voted in these elections.
The whole executive committee consists of 10 members under the chairmanship of Manmohan Khanna. Surinder Bahga, the ex-chairman of the chapter, was recently elected the Council Member of the IIA national body for the term 2012-14.
The ceremony for installation of the newly elected body was held here at Chandigarh’s Regional Headquarters of PHD Chambers of Commerce, on January 5. S D Singh was elected as
the Vice Chairman and Sarbjit Bahga was made the
Honorary Treasurer of the chapter.
Archana Chaudhary and Sanjay Goel were elected as Joint Honorary Secretary. The other Executive Committee members are Dinesh Bhagat, Prabhjot Kaur, Simranjeet Singh, R S Sandhu and G C Aggarwal.
Manmohan Khanna, while addressing the committee, said that they should stress on the need to encourage the competent authorities to nominate architects on various planning/ developmental boards and committees as professional members and proposed some agendas to be performed by the committee in the upcoming years.
Archana Chaudhary elaborated that the agenda of the IIA Chapter will be to suggest ways to advise the state and UT governments to encourage open deliberations with respect to the Master Plan of Chandigarh 2031 and other cities in Punjab. She further said that it is a time for change as Chandigarh is on the world map of architecture today.
Surinder Bahga, the outgoing chairman of the Chapter said that periodically, the standards of education should be reviewed and the gap between academia and industry should be bridged. He further emphasised that interaction of students of Architecture and professionals should be encouraged and full support in practical training and entrepreneurships should be provided to them.