BWF Council – 8 remain, 18 voted in, 2 absent, 1 on the way

The Badminton World Federation (BWF) welcomes seven new members to its 27-member BWF Council today, following voting at the Annual General Meeting (AGM).  One more new member will join next week after the newly-elected Athletes’ Commission chooses its chair.

Photo: Mikael Ropars / Badmintonphoto (live)

The President, Deputy President, and Vice-President for Para-Badminton all ran unopposed, while 26 candidates were in the running for 17 available spots.  Of the 17, 11 members were re-elected and they were joined by 7 newcomers.  The results are shown below:

Fifth overall in the voting, China’s Tang Jiu Hong earned the most votes among the 7 incoming members.  The 21 Council members listed above will join the five continental confederation presidents.

The last BWF Council elections were in 2013, when 17 rank-and-file members were elected, along with the three top executives, to form a 26-member body with the 5 continental heads.  Of those, five have been replaced by the incoming members elected today.  The now former members include Raj Gaya of Mauritius, Li Lingwei of China, Mehdi Karbasian of Iran, Ranjit De Silva of Sri Lanka, and Lawrence Chew of Switzerland.  Sadly, the 6th vacancy that was filled was that of the late Dr. Akhilesh Das Gupta of India, who died last month.

One of the newly elected members, Scotland’s Emma Mason, was actually a member of the BWF Council in 2013, but as the Chair of the BWF Athletes’ Commission.  She gave up that post in 2015 to Belgium’s Yuhan Tan and he will in turn be replaced by a new Chair next week, but only after voting is completed for four new members of the Commission.

The photo above shows 24 Council members posing together after the election was completed.  The outgoing Tan and two additional members are absent from the photograph.