Swimming Federation of India elects Jayaprakash as new president

In major changes in the Swimming Federation of India (SFI) administration, Tamil Nadu's R.N. Jayaprakash was elected as the new SFI President on Friday. Chokshi Mondal of Gujarat was elected as the General Secretary and Mekala Ramakrishna of Telangana as the Treasurer respectively. The office-bearers will serve a four-year tenure and were unanimously elected at the federation's annual general body meeting in Chennai. According to the Sportstar report, while speaking to the media, Jayaprakash said it is "a great honour to be elected President." He also mentioned that he will primarily be working towards increasing the number of participants at the grassroots level. Adding further, he said that the SFI plans on expanding the base and may send the core group of senior swimmers to either Bangalore or Pune. This will help the Indian swimmers prepare better for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Moreover, Bhopal will host the senior national championships between October and November later this year and Ranchi will host the junior and sub-junior nationals in June-July. Jayaprakash, who took over from Digambat Kamat, dislcosed that the federation will also works towards the upliftment of swimming in Chennai.

 "Swimming academies would be started in Tamil Nadu to impart quality training to swimmers on lines of those functioning in Pune and Karnataka," he added while speaking to the press. As per the PTI report, the other elected office-bearers are Vice- Presidents Balraj Sharma (Punjab), Rajiv Sukumaran Nair (Kerala), Kamlesh D Nanavati (Gujarat), Piyush Sharma (Madhya Pradesh) and Anil Vyas (Rajasthan). R.B. Pander from Bihar, Ravin Kumar from Uttar Pradesh, Mohan Satish Kumar from Karnataka and Anil Khatri from Haryana were elected as Joint Secretaries. The federation will continue with S. Pradeep Kumar as the National coach and SFI is still unsure about appointing a foreign coach.