Tibetan Parliament elects new Chief and Justice Commissioner of Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission

Sonam Norbu Dagpo, the newly elected Chief Justice Commissioner of Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission(L) and Tenzin Lungtok(R), the newly elected Justice Commissioner of Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission.

DHARAMSALA, 23 Sept: Sonam Norbu Dagpo, the current Secretary of the Central Tibetan Administration’s Department of Information and International Relations((DIIR) has been elected as the new Chief Justice Commissioner of the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission while Tenzin Lungtok was elected as the new Justice Commissioner of the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission.

Pitted against Sogtod Tsering Ngodup, the retired former Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Geneva Tibet Office, Switzerland, Central and Eastern Europe, Sonam Norbu Dagpo got 30 votes while Sogtod Tsering Ngodup received 8 votes from the Tibetan lawmakers in a voting held during the Tibetan Parliamentary session which also included 1 invalid and 3 blank votes.

The newly-elected Chief Justice Commissioner thanked the parliament for entrusting him to chair the highest judicial organ and one of the three most important pillars of the Tibetan democratic administration in exile.

“The Central Tibetan Administration runs on the rule of law based on the charter of the Tibetans and I look forward to serving wholeheartedly with complete dedication,” Dagpo told reporters.

Born in 1956, the incumbent secretary of the DIIR joined the CTA as a Tibetan civil servant in 1988 and came up through the ranks.

He joined the administration as a senior clerk at the Bureau of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in New Delhi on 20 September 1988. Over the last three decades, he served the administration in various capacities such as deputy secretary, chief co-ordinator of the Chinese outreach program at DIIR, Secretary of the Bureau of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in New Delhi, Additional Secretary of DIIR and as the new Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the Office of Tibet in Canberra, Australia before he assumed his current office on 30 July 2014.

Meanwhile, Tenzin Lungtok, the current Secretary of the Department of Religion and Culture was today elected as the new Justice Commissioner of the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission after securing 28 votes against 11 for Tsering Ngodup, the Additional Secretary of the Finance Department with one blank and 2 invalid votes.

Tenzin Lungtok joined the CTA as the Under Secretary at Department of Security in 1995 and served the administration in various capacities over the last 24 years.

The new Justice Commissioner of the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission described the office he will soon assume as an important post and vowed to carry on with same honesty and dedication that he carried while holding every chair thus far.

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