Over a month-long legal debacle finally came to a close today as the Madras High Court passed a judgement directing the election results for the new FMSCI council be made public.
The elections were held at the FMSCI’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) in December, but the results were withheld due to a pending lawsuit filed by Shrikant Karani of Sportscraft, Mumbai against the Indian ASN, FMSCI.
Karani had alleged that an unauthorised resolution had been passed by FMSCI, under the presidency of Vicky Chandhok last year, prior to the Annual General Meeting (AGM). The resolution had mandated all the FMSCI council members (clubs) to be non-profit organisations in order to be eligible to be elected to the council (voting for which took place at the December AGM).
The resolution was passed under the premise that it was a government regulation from the Ministry of Sport, and it would be a step towards motorsport being recognised as a legitimate sport by the government.
Later though, it came to light that the regulation was meant for the governing federation itself, and not for the individual sporting clubs – but it was already too late as most clubs had already complied by registering themselves as Section 25 (non-profit organisation) companies.
Sportscraft, run by Shrikant Karani, was an exception and decided to take the matter to court arguing that the changes to the federation articles necessitates a general body meeting and need to be passed by a two-third majority – which wasn’t followed. On Thursday, the Madras High Court had ruled in favour of Karani, with his vote being deemed to be considered as a tie-breaker only – which was ultimately not required.
At the FMSCI AGM, elections had been held for five council berths of the eight-member council. Three founder members have permanent seats – Madras Motor Sports Club, Karnataka Motor Sports Club and Coimbatore Auto Sports Club.
The five new members that have been voted to council are – PCRT Delhi (Performance Cars Racing Trust), headed by Tutu Dhawan, Meco Motorsport, Chennai, headed by Akbar Ebrahim, Spitfire Motorsports, Coimbatore, headed by J Balamurugan, Motorsports Club of Chikmaglur, headed by Farooq Ahmed and Himalayan Motorsport, Shimla, headed by Vijay Parmar.
Along with three permanent members, this eight-member council of clubs will now elect the new president, vice-president and other office bearers of the ASN early next week.