Kolkata’s S.K. Ajgar Ali and Amittrajit Ghosh took the top honours in the Enduro (car) and Xtreme (4X4) categories respectively of the 4th J&K Bank Mughal Rally held in Jammu and Kashmir on June 28 and 29.
In the Enduro (SUV) category it was Bengaluru’s Vishnu Singh who upset statemate Satish Gopalkrishnan to clinch the top award. In the Rally Xtreme (motorcycles) category, last year’s winner Mohit Verma of Chandigarh retained the title.
About 120 rallyists from across the country took part in the event, the first hill climb challenge in the competition.
Ali and his navigator Mustafa were driving a Mitsubishi Cedia in the Enduro (car) category and pipped statemate Subir Roy and navigator Nirav Mehta by 30 seconds, who were too driving a Cedia. Roy and Mehta led the category in the initial stage of the event but lost out towards the end. Pawan Choudhry and T. Nagarajan took the third spot in the category.
In the enduro (SUV) category, the eventual winners were behind Gopalkrishnan and navigator Savera D’Souza, in a Grand Vitara.
But Singh and navigator Aditya Anthoby, in a Maruti Gypsy, wrested the lead on the second day and they too finished with a cushion of 30 seconds from their second placed opponents.
The Chandigarh duo of Jagmeet Gill and Chandra Sekhar, in a Maruti Gypsy, took the third position.
In the Xtreme category, Ghosh’s Mitsunishi Cedia won with a comfortable margin of two minutes ahead of Delhi’s Amanpreet Ahluwalia and navigator Sandeep Mansukhani in a Marurti Zen. Abhishek Mishra of Jaipur along with navigator Sudeep Haldar finished third.
In the Rally Xtreme (motorcycles) category, Verma finished three minutes ahead of Gurpinder Singh Sarao of Sangrur while Rajan Singh of Ludhiana took the third position.
J&K tourism minister Ghulam Ahmad Mir gave away the prizes at a function at the Sher-e-Kashmir International Convention Centre in Srinagar on Sunday.