The Amateur Athletic Federation of India has decided to delete the 'Amateur' word and change its name to Athletic Federation of India.

The new name, decided by the AAFI general council which met at Pune on Saturday, will come into effect from April 1, 2004.

The council also unanimously re-elected Suresh Kalmadi and Lalit K Bhanot as president and secretary for the term 2004-2008.

Approving the calendar for this year, the council decided to conduct 26 events from Under-14 to the open section. It has also been decided to scrap the Under-22 section and instead from this year a National Youth Championship (Under-18) would be held.

The inaugural Youth Meet would be held at Jamshedpur from November 14-16.

The AAFI would start more Athletic Academies around the country and employ more foreign coaches to train the young athletes.

Plans are on to open a Middle and Long Distance Academy at Jamshedpur next month. An Academy of Throws is already in place at the Salwan Public School in New Delhi.

The Federation also announced that it has finalised the training programme of probables for the Olympics and said they will be sent to participate in the European and Asian Circuit meets.

The Council also gave the green signal to bid for the 2009 World Athletic Championship in New Delhi. In the first week of October, the city will hold the 13th World Half Marathon Championship.

Soon after his re-election, Kalmadi told reporters that the Federation is all set to organise the 13th IAAF World Half Marathon to be held in New Delhi on October three and also bid for the World Athletic Championship in 2009.

This is for the first time that the World Half Marathon was being held in Asia, he added.

"We want to use the World Athletic Championships as a springboard for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi," Kalmadi said.

He said the Federation has granted permanent affiliation to Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh Athletics Associations. The Federation has also finalised the training programme for the probables for Olympic Games and will provide them sufficient opportunities to qualify for the Olympics.

The Federation has also decided to start Certificate Course for coaches and will intensify efforts to curb doping, he added.