Former Member of Parliament Kalikesh Narayan Singh Deo has been elected the new president of the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI), after he defeated VK Dhall 36-21 in the polls held at the Constitution Club of India on Saturday.
Deo was taking care of the day-to-day functioning of the NRAI after the position fell vacant last year following the resignation of Raninder Singh as per the government’s National Sports Code (NSC). Last year, the sports ministry had issued a directive that heads of national sports federations (NSFs) cannot hold office for more than 12 years as per the NSC.
After Raninder stepped down in April last year, the NRAI was run by its senior vice-president Kalikesh. During Kalikesh’s tenure as caretaker head of the federation, India won three bronze at the Paris Olympics, thus breaking the jinx of going without a medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Kalikesh will remain president till 2025, when the next NRAI general body is scheduled.
Laying out his priorities after the declaration of the results, Kalikesh said, “We intend to take shooting sport forward. My priority would be to ensure new high-performance centres come up, that NRAI comes up with new programs to spread the word of shooting, including courses on governance and ethics and to ensure that Shooting spreads both at the grassroots, as well as at the pinnacle of tournament play.”
The new NRAI president’s immediate responsibility would be to ensure the smooth conduct of the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup Final, the year-ending international Shooting sport showdown between the world’s top shooters, scheduled to be held at New Delhi’s Dr Karni Singh Shooting range from October 13-18.