After voting in the FIDE General Assembly
Update (1st October): Nizar Ali Elhaj from Libya is elected third FIDE Vice President on Friday. He received 60 votes, as opposed to GM Zurab Azmaiparashvili from Georgia who had 56 votes. The 2012 World Youth Championship is awarded to Maribor (Slovenia).
30th September: D V Sundar from India and Mohammad Jafar Kambuzia from Iran are appointed FIDE Vice Presidents after the voting on the second day of the FIDE General Assembly. The third VP will be known on Friday. Bellow is the press release of the All India Chess Federation:
Noted sports administrator and secretary of All India Chess Federation Mr. D V Sundar was appointed Vice President in FIDE, the World Chess federation, following an election that is still in progress Khanty-Mansyisk.
Following the election of Mr. Bharat Singh Chauhan as President of Commonwealth Chess Association and Mr. R M Dongre as the President of Asian zone 3.2, the election of Mr. Sundar in the FIDE office will serve as a major boost to Chess in India as many big events are likely to come to the birthplace of the game of chess with these officials in key positions.
Mr. Sundar appointment is ofcourse the biggest as he will now be responsible for FIDE affairs as well as represent India in the world body as one of the main office-bearer. It may be mentioned here that Mr. Sundar had pledged the support of All India Chess Federation to the election campaign of Mr. Ilyumzhinov a few weeks before FIDE elections.
The mandate was clearly in Mr. Sundar’s favour with the support of Ilyumzhinov. It was an election for three posts for Vice Presidents in which there were seven contestants. In the first round of ballot anyone over 50% votes was suppose to be elected and the remaining would again need to battle it out for the remaining posts.
As it happened, Mr. Sundar qualified in the first round of voting itself garnering as many as 74 votes. The other candidate to qualify vide the first round of voting was Iranian representative Mr. Mohammad Jafar Kambuzia and for the last candidate the voting will continue on Friday.
Down to earth as he is, Mr. Sundar candidly admitted he is yet to get in to the groove of FIDE. “I don’t know yet what it means to be Vice President in such a mammoth organisation, I am sure it will bring a lot of responsibility as well as I hope it will help the growth of Chess in our country”, he said soon after getting elected. Interestingly, Mr. Sundar had filed his nomination just a day before the elections.
Mr. Sundar’s appointment is likely to help bring in more FIDE and other International events to India which, in turn, will help the Indian players more chances to play in various International events. Currently Indian youngsters are dominant in Asian chess and consistently win medals in world events too, with this it seems a certainty that more opportunities will cultivate much stronger players who bring more laurels for the country.
