AICF BACK ON RAILS
By Manuel Aaron
After 16 long years, the affairs of All India Chess Federation (AICF) are once again transparent. On 31st January 2005, the Madras High Court restrained Mr P.T.Ummer Koya and Mr Soumen Mazumdar from being the Secretary and Treasurer of AICF.
For long the accounts of the AICF was mismanaged and siphoned off. Many organizers have smarted under the autocratic manner in which AICF Secretary was functioning. All organisers interested in the game of chess knew that there was something wrong but kept silent due to threat of coercion brought on them. Of special interest is the Honorarium that Mr Koya started getting in 1995. It started on Rs 60,000 per year but has reached 3.11 lakhs per annum. This was not the only honorarium. He also got an annual honorarium as editor of AICF Forum, as Webmaster (!), Computer Programmer for AICF and Computer Programmer for AICF Forum! Added to this income are several thousand Rupees per month towards local conveyance, refreshments, etc.
In 1998, when there was a discussion on the AICF budget at Delhi, I had suggested that to make both ends meet, we do away with the Honorarium given to Mr Koya. The meeting was shocked that I had openly spoken out against Mr Koya and nobody spoke for a while. The then President of the AICF, Mr Dhruv Sawhney, then a supporter of Mr Koya broke the silence and laughed it off saying "He is a Honorarium Secretary".
At the June 2004 Annual General Body meeting, Mr Koya claimed that FIDE had increased its fees for rated players to 10 Swiss Francs per player per year (this is a lie, it is only 5 Sw Fr) and that the AICF had to pay Rs 16.65 lakhs the previous year (again a lie, it was only Rs 10.25 lakhs) against the Rs 4 lakhs donated by the AICF President Mr N.Srinivasan. At that meeting, Mr Koya made the GB accept 10% cut from players' prize money as there was no funds in the AICF. At the same meeting, without being placed on the agenda, Mr Koya said that the AICF should start a Hall of Fame and that it should be housed in Chess India Complex owned by him paying an annual rent of Rs 3 lakhs.
With the sudden reduction in their prize money, the players rose in revolt, wore black badges at tournaments visited by Mr Koya and stalled the start of the National "A" at Vizag in December. Maharashtra boldly supported the players and refused to deduct the 10% from players' prizes. So, Mr Koya launched a move to disaffiliate Maharashtra Chess Association, one of the founders of the AICF.
Meanwhile the players wrote to the AICF President to intervene. The President in turn wrote to Mr Koya to roll back the 10% cut and not to proceed against Maharashtra. Fuming at the President's sympathy for the players view point, Mr Koya cunningly, improperly and without authority attempted to amend the AICF constitution to clip the President's powers!
All this caused the State Chess Associations of Delhi, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu to consult Legal and Tax experts. Painstakingly going through the minutes and audited accounts of the AICF for the past many years, these experts came to the conclusion that minutes of meetings had been manipulated and a massive siphoning off of the funds of the AICF has been underway. (A summary of his expenses alone are appended below.)
Therefore a suit was filed in the Madras High Court by the three founder members of the AICF. On 31 Jan 2005, Mr Koya and Mr Mazumdar were restrained by the Court from acting as Secretary and Treasurer of the AICF.
On 3rd February, the AICF President co-opted Mr D.V.Sundar and Mr N.K.Mishra as Secretary and Treasurer of the AICF till the elections to elect office bearers for the term 2005-2009. The same day he convened an Urgent General Body meeting of the AICF to be held at Connemara Hotel, Chennai on 19 Feb 2005 at 11:30 A.M.
The Urgent meeting on the 19th Feb approved the President's action in co-opting Mr Sundar and IM Mishra. Mr Koya's supporters unsuccessfully tried to stop the meeting saying it was illegal and that the Court had ordered no further meetings.
The next day Mr Koya illegally inserted in the website run by him that the president Mr N.Srinivasan was expelled and that S.L.Harsh, P.K.Bhaskaran and V.R.Bobba were installed as 'President, Secretary and Treasurer of the AICF'.
Therefore the same three State Associations went to Court and in a fresh Suit, got these three men as well as Mr Koya restrained from acting as office bearers of the AICF.
Mr Koya made three more attempts to stay the injunction but failed. On 6th April he appealed to the Bench of the Madras High Court which granted stay of further proceedings till the 20th April.
It is relevant to mention that nowhere in the court, has Koya challenged the figures and statistics presented by us to the court. His objections have been only on technical grounds which we are advised will not stand.
Mr D.V.Sundar was invited by the FIDE Continental President for Asia, Mr Khalifa Mohammed Al-Hitmi to Qatar for a meeting. After a thorough investigation Mr Al-Hitmi sent a letter to the FIDE President that there is only one AICF in India and it has Mr N.Srinivasan and Mr D.V.Sundar as President and Secretary. This is the situation when we go to press with this issue.
We have kept our narration short and have not included Mr Koya's clandestine registration of AICF at Calicut in 1991 while it was already registered in Madras. Nor have we given details of how Koya's men have approached, and failed, at the Kerala High Court in February to hijack the AICF, and many other things.
We tell you all these things as Mr Koya has many, many years of influence over some Newspapers. With their help all news adverse to him are not published in those newspapers. For accurate and prompt news watch the AICF website: IndianChessFed.org or our own website: TamilChess.com
Truth will Triumph.
Samples of Mr Koya's extravagant
'income':
Apart from his income from coaching camps, rent to his own premises for both
AICF and AICF Forum, office expenses, Doordarshan contract, etc., during the
last 4 years Mr Koya has secreted the under mentioned amounts from the funds of
AICF:
===========================================================
Sl. Nature of
2000-
2001-
2002-
2003-
No.
Payments
2001
2002
2003
2004
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Honorarium to
Hon
Secretary
1,80,000
2,16,000
2,59,200
3,10,800
2. Honorarium to
AICF Forum
Editor
84,000
1,20,000 1,44,000
1,72,800
3. Honorarium to
Website Editor
-
-
1,44,000
1,44,000
4. Computer Programmer
54,000
54,000
64,000
76,000
(AICF)
Computer Programer
-
-
-
76,800
(AICF Forum)
5. Web Master
-
38,500
50,400 -
6. Conveyance
57,600
69,120
82,800 90,400
7. Personal Secy
to Hony Secy -
84,000
1,00,000
1,20,960
8. T.A./D.A.
2,23,953
6,79,753
5,41,758
8,16,811
First published in the April 2005 issue of Chess Mate