Srinivasan takes over as AICF president

By Our Special Correspondent

KOLKATA, OCT. 13. Mr. N. Srinivasan of Tamil Nadu is the new president of the All India Chess Federation while Mr. P.T. Ummer Koya remains the honorary secretary for a fourth (four-year) term. Both were elected unanimously at the Annual General Meeting here on Saturday.

The AGM also elected six vice-presidents and six joint secretaries. Mr. Soumen Majumdar retained the honorary treasurer post for a third term.

As expected, the AGM went off smoothly and there was near unanimity in all the decisions. Everything was over within two hours and the delegates came out for lunch by 1 p.m. The only posts which saw elections was for vice-presidents. For six posts, there were eight candidates of which K. Ratnakumar of Kerala withdrew, leaving seven in the field. In the election, U.L. Asarpota of Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh's P.C. Chaturvedi, S.L. Harsh of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh's V.K. Rathi all secured 53 votes each, Mrs. Romola Chakraborti of Bengal 52 and D.V. Sundar of Tamil Nadu received 51. The seventh candidate, Ramachandra of Karnataka, got just two.

The presidential candidate, Col. Mohan Singh, withdrew in favour of Mr. Srinivasan. Likewise, V.R. Bobba of Andhra Pradesh pulled out, leaving Koya the lone candidate for the secretary's post. There were eight candidates for the joint secretary posts out of which R.S. Tiwari of Haryana and Udayan Kanti Ghosh of Bengal withdrew and only the required six were left in the fray.

The first International Master of the country and former AICF secretary who laid the foundation for a sound chess body in the secretary, Mr. Manuel Aaron, was the returning officer and Mr. Soumen Chaudhuri, the acting director of the Sports Authority of India, Eastern Centre, was the government observer. The president, Mr. Dhruv M. Sawhney, could not attend the AGM. One of the vice-presidents, Mr. S.L. Harsh, chaired the meeting.

Out of 31 units with two votes each, four affiliates - Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Central Revenue Sports Board and Maharashtra - were absent while Lakshwadeep Chess Association and Tripura opted for postal votes.

The AGM also unanimously resolved to bring to the notice of the Union Home Minister the activities of Messrs R.K. Singh, IPS, and Dheraj Raghuvanshi in trying to misappropriate the AICF funds by printing fake letterheads and rubber stamps and writing to the State Bank of Travancore, Kozhikode, falsely claiming that they were the president and secretary of AICF respectively.

The house resolved to request the Home Minister to thoroughly investigate the matter through a Central Government agency.

Calendar approved

The house approved the tournament calendar for 2001, 2002 and 2003 and decided to host the FIDE Presidential Board meeting in March 2002 at Goa in which all the top officials of the international body are expected.

It was decided to organise the second World Cup just before the Chess Olympiad to be held at Lubiana in Slovenia in October next year. According to Mr. Koya, a lot of Indian cities had shown interest in hosting the World Cup and a decision would be taken only after receiving the bids. The guarantee money alone would be to the tune of $50,000 to get the meet.

Kozhikode would host a special invitation GM-level chess tournament from December 16-26 as part of the federation's Golden Jubilee celebrations rescheduled to the beginning of the 2002. Jharkhand and Chattisgarh were given affiliation.

Mr. Koya said that the director general of SAI, New Delhi, would be requested to have a nine-month diploma course for chess coaches to improve the strength of coaches in the country. He said the need of the hour was to encourage playing chess at the school level.

Mr. Koya also informed that the World championship preliminaries would be held in Moscow from November 25 to December 12 on a knock-out basis and the two qualifiers would figure in the final - also in Moscow - from January 16 to 26, 2002.

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