INFORMATION TO ALL OFFICE BEARERS, STATE ASSOCIATIONS & CHESS PLAYERS
 

COACHING PROGRAMME
 

The All India Chess Federation wishes chess friends and their family members a very happy and prosperous New Year. We have decided to start our coaching programe which is long over due. Ever since, the present set of office bearers took over the administration, you all know, there were lot of problems in running the day to day administration of the Federation- to send the players for participation for various tournaments abroad and to organize International tournaments in India. Money was the biggest constraint as more than Rs 1 crore belonging to the AICF was removed from the Bank Accounts belonging to AICF by the former Hon.Secretary and his friends like S.L.Harsh, P.K.Bhaskaran and V.K.Bobha , the last three claiming themselves as the President, Secretary and treasurer of the AICF. A criminal case/suit has been filed to retrieve the money.

To keep the morale of the players high, it was necessary that we participated in large numbers in International tournaments held in India and abroad for which we needed Funds. While the Government of India was kind enough to clear all our proposals and extend Air tickets, for
other expenses like registration fee, entry fees, Board and Lodge, kitting and other expenses for all the participants in official events like Asian, World, Asian Individual, World Individual, Asian Zonals, Olympiad and World cup etc., we had to spend from our funds. For some of the open tournaments, the players themselves had to bear the expenses. The reimbursement from the Government was not forthcoming since our predecessors did not submit the relevant documents to the Government after receiving the Grants. This dates back to 1989 since the previous Secretary took over and upto 2005 January till he was ousted. About 60 cases ( Tournaments ) of non submission of documents spanning these 15 years were to be submitted to the Government, before the Government could consider our proposals and release funds. As previous Secretary did not handover a single paper or any document to the present incumbents, imagine the plight of the present AICF administration. It is to our credit that we worked very quietly and efficiently to tackle this problem without sending any signals of panic to our players. We made sure, that the players were not unduly disturbed on this issue. We are happy to let you know that this problem is almost solved and the Government has agreed to release the pending grants one by one.

It is just not only the funds that we were battling out, but the plight of the office bearers in fighting several cases in various Courts which were time consuming and energy sapping. We have won each and every case to safe guard the legal status of our Federation. Apart from the cases against the Federation, our erstwhile friends have filed criminal cases against our office bearers, which of course are frivolous, and could not succeed.

Due to all these, the Federation could not concentrate on the coaching programme which our children are looking for. We now intend to start the program and the Central Council of the AICF decided to include this as part of the Long Term Development plan to be submitted to the Government of India, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. We already had preliminary discussions with the Government and the response was very encouraging.

We intend to have three different set of coaching programmes

1. For players who have qualified to represent the Country in the official International Tournaments.

2. For players to be identified on the basis of merit by the various State Associations

3. Special camps in India and abroad for the Olympiad and World Cups participants etc.,

We are in the process of identifying coaches for the above programme and we are inviting eligible persons to contact us for the purpose.

For players to be identified by the State Associations, we request the various State Associations to send us a list of ten children in the age group of 7 – 15 for whom the AICF will take care of the Boarding and Lodging apart from the expenses in employing good coaches. The State Association will be required to take care of the travel expenses alone. We can also consider sending coaches at AICF cost to various States in which case the State Association should take care of the local hospitality of the Coach and their children. We also request the various States to propose the probable dates for the camp so that we can finalize the coaching calendar. We request all the State Associations to make use of this opportunity so that the players get maximum advantage of this programme. Kindly hurry up with your response.

If this coaching programme has to be meaningful and successful, we need the cooperation of every one involved in this and the AICF looks forward to a pleasant and purposeful 2008.