Our Bureau
New York
On January 10, 2021, Oath taking Ceremony for elected and nominated members of the IALI Executive Council and Adhoc committee was held at ApnaGhar (My Home) in Hicksville N.Y. Due to Covid-19 guidelines the ceremony was attended by a limited number.
After a formal welcome by Kuljeet Ahluwalia, Secretary, IALI, the program began with the Ganesh Vandana (a prayer) by Ms. Kiran Arora (Sangeet Forum chair). The Cultural Chair, IALI, Anju Sharma invited Human Rights Chairman Dr. Bobby K Kalotee, who introduced chief guest of the day, Hon. Judge Norman St. George Administrative Judge for Nassau County Supreme Court. The oath was taken to support and defend the US Constitution, its laws; NY State Constitution and its laws; and the IALI Constitution, and its Laws and By-Laws.
IALI Officers 2021, President Shashi Malik, Vice President- Jasbir Jay Singh, Secretary- Kuljeet Ahluwalia & Treasurer Neelema Srivastva were among the first to take the oath administered by Hon. Norman St. George. The ceremony continued with the swearing in of elected members of council Deepa Goyal, Neeru Bhambri, RaviKanta Varma and Renu Kapoor. Elected council members Gary Sikka, Harsha P, Pradeep Tandon, and Dr. Ramesh Gupta were unable to attend the ceremony.
The next batch sworn in were members of the Standing Committee and Adhoc Committee; Anju Sharma- Cultural Chair, Ravinder Kumar-Membership Chair, Sushil Khanna Finance Chair (was unable to attend). The committee members, among present were Dr. Jay Sarkar- Finance committee members, Deepak Bansal (Professional Forum) Kiran Arora (Sangeet Forum), Mohinder Miglani (Travel & Tourism), Prafula Vaghela (Legislature/ PR Suffolk County), Shveta Grover Nagpal (Kids Forum), Venus Bobby Bhasin (Sports Forum), Abha Bhatnagar, Madhu Nagpal and Mamata Anand (Outreach committee) to take the Oath.
The Chairman Bobby Kalotee, introduced President Shashi Malik and she thanked Honorable Administrative Judge Hon. Norman St. George, Chairman Bobby Kalotee, Executive Council, Adhoc members, for joining the oath ceremony.
Shashi Malik stated that it was a great privilege & honor to be President & to serve the oldest and largest organization India Association of Long Island, many thanks to all the IALI members for their support in 2020 and special thanks to them for having her elected for another term 2021. Last year was very challenging due to COVID-19 but we learned and adopted to do most of our IALI events with virtual socialization; In 2020 IALI introduced new forums namely “Arts & Culture, “Yoga”, Spirituality”, “Health & Wellness” “Charity Forum” and “Professional Forum”. For these forum sessions were held via conference calls/ Zoom, regarding the impact of Covid-19 information was presented by professionals on areas related to health, mortgage, insurance and finance.
One of our forum “Health & Wellness” was very successful as our former president Dr Sukhvinder Ranu took the lead to provide us timely information on various topics to our community along with Dr Sunil Mehra (former President IALI), Dr Usha Tandon, Dr Jag Kalra, Dr Smeeta Verma and Dr Rajesh Verma, which we will continue in 2021. In addition, IALI is starting two new forums in 2021, first one is Heritage Educational Forum; where language classes and music lessons for Harmonium and other instruments will be scheduled, the second one is Travel & Tourism with hope of getting life back to normal.
This year is still challenge for us as the Virus is still out there as we are not out of the woods and the President urged everyone to follow the CDC guidelines.
President said she is honored to have the trust of IALI members to have elected her for 2021 and to be working with executive council and she is looking forward to serving our community. She thanked the donors who supported IALI during this challenging time, and special thanks to Chairman Bobby Kalotee ji for his support.
The program concluded with Secretary-Kuljeet Ahluwalia reading out the names of the entire team of 2021 which included the Forum Chairs, Co-chairs and committee members. Due to covid-19 limitation, personal preventative reasons and keeping in mind the safety measures the ECs/ nominated members, IALI members, guests and those who could not attend the ceremony were missed.
