Anil Khanna nominated honorary ATF Life President

Veteran sports administrator Anil Khanna was nominated as the honorary Life President of the Asian Tennis Federation (ATF) on Monday. The decision was taken at the federation’s Board of Directors meeting held Melbourne.

Khanna has also been additionally appointed as the Chairman of the finance committee as well as the co-chairman of the ATF foundation. In addition to Anil Khanna C.S. Raju was elected as the senior vice-president of the foundation representing South Asia.

Anil Dhuper was elected as a member of the senior’s committee while V.K. Batra was elected as a member of the constitution of the ATF.

In October 2019, Khanna had decided not to contest for the President’s post in the elections which were held in India a month later.

It is to be noted that Khanna had written to the Asian Tennis Federation in October 2019 that has served as the president of the ATF board for 14 years he felt satisfied. He also said that he was deciding to step out of the election as he felt that the time was right for someone else from Asian nations to take up the responsibility to lead the ATF as its president and to represent Asia in the future on the board of directors of the ITF.

Prior to this in September 2019 Khanna had contested the ITF elections in Lisbon, where he lost the presidential election David Haggerty from the United States of America.

Khanna has enjoyed immense support at ITF but his tenure as the President of All India Tennis Association (AITA) was not very smooth. Khanna and the government were at loggerhead in 2016 after the former was elected President for a second term (2012-16).

The government had claimed that Khanna had not served a mandatory four-year cooling-off period before being elected as President of AITA. Khanna later went on to withdraw his candidature as President of AITA, saying the hostile relationship with the government will only hurt the game.