The Annual General Body meeting of the All India Chess Federation elected new office bearers for the 2014-2017 period at Chennai on June 22, 2014. The elections were unanimous. Justice K.M.Nataraajan (Retired, High Court of Madras) was the Returning Officer and he read out the elected names.
In a significant change, P.R. Venketrama Raja, Vice Chairman of Ramco Cements, and a well known chess promoter and lover of the game was elected President of the All India Chess Federation.
His company Ramco Systems had been sponsor of Viswanathan Anand and that was instrumental in bringing him to the doorsteps of the world chess title.
The outgoing AICF President, J.C.D. Prabhakar gave one of his best speeches ever and wished the new team under P.R. Venketrama Raja well to take AICF to the next level.
Under Prabhakar, AICF conducted the World Chess Championship at Chennai in November 2013 in a manner no one else did in the history of chess.
It was made public that the prize money of all Open Tournaments during 2013-2014 was a massive Rs.3,58,00,000. Together with the prize money of National Championships Rs.41,00,000 the prize money would total nearly Rs.4,00,00,000.
The All India Chess Federation is one of the cash rich sporting bodies in India. After cricket and tennis, the AICF is the third richest body it was known. The All India Chess Federation had Rs.4,30,00,000 in fixed deposit in the bank account.
The newly elected members with posts and states they are from:
President:
P.R.Venketrama Raja (TN)
Vice Presidents:
A.Bakthavachalam (Pdy)
G.Bhasker (Andaman)
Dibyendu Barua (WB)
A.Narasimha Reddy (AP)
Pradeep Jain (Del)
Sekhar Chandra Sahu (Odi)
Hon. Secretary:
V.Hariharan (TN)
Joint Secretaries:
Atul Kumar (J&K)
R.Hanumantha (Kar)
Kapil Saxena (MP)
Kishor M.Bandekar (Goa)
Rochhunga Ralte (Miz)
P.Venugopalan (Ker)
Treasurer:
Ravindra M Dongre (Mah)
Good news.