MUMBAI: With talent costs climbing, the importance of the Cine & TV Artistes? Association (Cintaa) - the premier association representing TV and film actors - has been growing every year in the TV industry. And the battle to occupy posts in the association has been growing in intensity every two years.

This year was no different. 58 contestants were vying to get elected. The elections were held on 1 May concurrent with the annual general meeting at the Barifwala Hall in Mumbai and counting took about two days thereafter.

The results came out this morning with veteran comic actor Johnny Lever romping home with 839 votes followed by Rakhi Sawant who got 734 votes and Sahila Chadda with 670 votes.

Each of them represented factions within Cintaa. The existing committee members led by Lever, new entrant Sawant and solo candidate Chaddha. The designations of the newly elected members will be decided sometime next week.

The Johny Lever group emerged victorious once again with majority of its existing executive members getting re-elected. Amongst the re-elected members are Dharmesh Tiwari, Gajender Chauhan, Aroon Bali, Rajiv Verma, Raza Murad and Sudhir Pandey, while Pankaj Dheer and Shagufta Ali are the new ones.

From Sawant?s group Sushil Parashar and Gulshan Pandey came out triumphant.

Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) general secretary Dinesh Chaturvedi commented, "Johny has been extremely helpful and has done a lot for the artistes. There have been a lot of improvements during his tenure as a president like medical insurance, security, and so on. We are looking forward to some more improvements."

Cintaa represents the interests of the artiste community and steps in when there are disputes with TV or film producers, or broadcasters and also works to improve their lot.

Former Cintaa general secretary Dharmesh Tiwari said: "Cintaa has always been welcoming artistes who face any injustice or are not given due respect. We, as an association, always aimed to secure the members with fair conditions of life and service. We have always tried to redress their grievances, tried to prevent any reduction of wages and if possible, to obtain an advance whenever circumstances allow."

Given below is the list of winners of Cintaa Elections 2013