Yashwant Sinha takes over as AITA chief

Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha was on Monday unanimously elected president of the All India Tennis Association after long-serving chief R K Khanna lay down office in Delhi earlier in the day.

Anil Khanna, chairman of India's Davis Cup committee, was elected secretary general for four years. He replaces octogenarian Ramesh Desai of Bombay.

Karnataka Chief Minister S M Krishna, himself a keen tennis player like Sinha, was among the eight vice-presidents elected to the apex body for the period 2000-2004, at its annual general meeting.

Krishna, who played college-level tennis, is credited with bringing the ATP World Doubles Championship to India.

Bangalore will play host to the prestigious event in December as the championship moves out of Europe or the United States for the first time since its inception.

Sinha takes over the AITA, now a financially very sound sports body, after almost a decade-long rule by R K Khanna.

The senior Khanna, who became AITA secretary in 1966 - the year India reached the Davis Cup Challenge Round - in his 'avatar' as president made the federation a financially sound body after it had suffered a severe financial crunch in the 80s.

Khanna had served as senior vice-president of the International Tennis Federation and also the president of Asian Tennis Federation. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1975 for his services to the development of tennis. He then quit the organisation the same year following government guidelines, but returned to his designated place in 1988 with Desai in tow, with the AITA having zero financial resources and no organisational structure.

Khanna and Desai were on Monday appointed honorary life president and honorary life vice-president respectively of AITA. The AGM also appointed former Davis Cup captain Jaideep Mukerjea and Raja Narasimha Rao as honorary life vice-presidents.

Following is the list of AITA office bearers:

President: Yashwant Sinha
Secretary-general: Anil Khanna
Vice-presidents: S M Krishna, N Kumar, M Damodaran, D V Bhatia, Ghanashyam Patel, Chintan Parikh, B P Verma, Manik Goswami.
Joint-secretary: Bharat N Oza
Treasurer: T D Francis.