BENGALURU: Akbar Ebrahim has been unanimously elected as president of the Federation of Motor Sports Clubs of India in the 43rd AGM held in Chennai on Monday. Former president J Prithviraj of Coimbatore was elected as vice-president. Eight clubs were also elected to the FMSCI council.
Ebrahim, a Chennai-based former international racer, took over from Hyderabad’s Zayn Khan for a two-year term. Khan had been the president for just over a year and was elected following the untimely demise of then president R Bharath Raj in August 2015. The AGM and election was to be held on December 7 but had to be postponed due to the demise of Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa.
With a lot of international standard events being held in India, most notably a round of the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship in Chikkamagaluru recently, it is an interesting time for motorsports. More importantly, there is huge potential for the sport to grow.
“The priority is now to put in hard work to take the sport to higher levels, right from grassroots level to the top, both nationally and internationally. This will be across all disciplines,” Ebrahim told Express.
“We intend to empower various commissions and have them involved in all our meetings. There will be more interactions with commission heads and organisers. If the communication between FMSCI and organisers is more effective, that translates into better communication between FMSCI and competitors. We need to ensure that the competitors get their value because they put in the hard work. If there are no competitors, there is no sport.”
Ebrahim said one of the priorities would be to appoint deserving candidates for various commissions that manage racing, rallying etc. “We will ensure that commission heads are capable people who deserve that post. I’m going to identify such people in the coming weeks,” he stated.
Asked if the FMSCI would emphasize rallying with the conduct of the APRC in India, Ebrahim said: “APRC in India is a good thing but it is not correct to spend time on one or two disciplines.”
vivekphadnis@newindianexpress.com