NEW DELHI: The All India Football Federation and the Local Organising Committee (LOC) of the FIFA Under-17 World Cup have allegedly refused to part with information on money spent in holding Mission XI Million (MXIM) workshops across the country.
A Tribune report says that a Right to Information (RTI) application filed with the Sports Ministry, AIFF and the LOC to source more information on the government's ambitious programme aimed at covering at least 11 million schoolchildren, has failed to elicit any details. MXIM workshops were to be held in over 37 cities and 12,000 schools across all 29 states of the country by 6 September “to create awareness about the WC and build a legacy with a vision to make football the sport of choice in India”.
However, the AIFF and LOC refused to part with the information, citing Section 8(1)(d) of the RTI Act, The Tribune reports.
The section reads: “information including commercial confidence, trade secrets or intellectual property, the disclosure of which would harm the competitive position of a third party, unless the competent authority is satisfied that larger public interest warrants the disclosure of such information.”
The AIFF however revealed that LOC had outsourced the work related to the MXIM project to a private event management agency operating out of Gurugram, but did not divulge details on how the tenders were floated and what the criterion was for awarding the contract to this agency. “We can confirm that AIFF had signed the agreement entered into with the agency. However, we are unable to provide you with any information… the contents of the said agreement being private and confidential. Disclosure of such content would undoubtedly harm the competitive position of the agency i.e a third party,” read the RTI reply.
Three stakeholders - the Sports Ministry, AIFF and the Javier Ceppi-headed LOC of the WC - were entrusted with the task of making the MXIM workshops a success, with the government setting aside a sum of Rs250 million as a project cost. Out of this, the ministry had sanctioned an amount of Rs125.5 million.
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