Indians elected to governing council of APNIC after a decade

After a decade, two Indians have been appointed to the governing council of global IP address managing body for 56 Asian countries.
ISPAI President Rajesh Chharia and ISPAI Executive Council member Roopinder Singh Perhar from India have won the Executive Council (EC) election of Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC), in New Zealand today.
"We want to create the right atmosphere for 'Connecting the Unconnected'. At India too, under leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi we are running Digital India program to empower people by connecting them to Internet.
I would look forward to playing a further role in strengthening the position at proposing and formulating policies as per the needs of the community," Chharia told PTI over phone from New Zealand.

He has won with the highest number of votes (1533 votes) and elected to the position of Secretary APNIC in the seven member Governing Council. At this position, Chharia will handle administrative function of APNIC.
In 2005, Kusumba Sridhar was elected member at APNIC governing council.

"This has been a historic win for India and I am delighted that for the first time India has been able to garner this kind of participation in decision making at APNIC," Ajay Kumar Additional Secretary at the Department of Electronics and Information Technology said.
Kumar said the scale and impact of Digital India makes India a very important player in the Internet community and India would be participating actively in fulfilling the global responsibility for the next generation of growth of Internet.

The council is headed by Nepal origin US resident Gaurab Upadhyay as Chairman.
Chharia is also serving as Director of National Internet Exchange of India and has played a key role in the launch of the .Bharat domain name extension and other regional language domain names as well setting up of the Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers (IRINN).