SINGHS are Kings, and in the battle royale between the two Singhs, M S Gill and Raja Randhir Singh, the sports federations of the country are the foot soldiers suffering the most: penury, insecurity, stress and frustration.
The key to the rebellion by the Indian Olympic Association was financial independence, which Raja Randhir Singh said that the IOA and federations will manage on their own.
The recent elections to the governing body of badminton, and the subsequent statement by the Badminton Association of India president V K Verma (unanimously elected) that it was a slap in the face of the Sports Ministry, shows that the BAI has followed the IOA to the T.
The government tried to control the BAI by first propping up former India cricket captain Mohammed Azharuddin as a candidate for the presidentship of the BAI. Azharuddin declared he would soon expose the wrong doings by Verma & Co.
The ministry did not sit idle though, realizing that Azhar’s warheads were weak. Joint Secretary of the ministry then called a meeting of the funding agencies for the BAI – Railways, ONGC and others – and read out a list of misdeeds, and warned the BAI that it must intimate the ministry of the date of elections, electoral process and so forth and said the ministry would send an election observer too.
Verma couldn’t give two hoots: he would not let the observer in and refused to officially intimate the date of the polls. He had in the meanwhile taken the wind out of Azhar’s sails and got key BAI players to declare support for him: “my election as president is a foregone conclusion and the process is just a formality”, he famously said.
In between, of course, there was a High Court case going on, and the Raja had managed to first get a letter from the IOC addressed to the IOA, and then get a second letter addressed to the ministry directly, warning the latter of a possible de-recognition. The IOC also incited the Sports Minister to meet them and clarify issues.
Most importantly, the IOC repeatedly said that government interference would not be tolerated and that there would not be separate rules in the Olympic Charter for India.
What complicated the scenario is that till now the High Court has said that the sports federations would have to be controlled by the ministry and that this would not violate the Olympic Charter. So a major question arose and has till now not been resolved: in this matter is IOC supreme or the court of a country?
I asked many lawyers but they were none too clear. The court has since then been given the IOC letter to the ministry and will Friday give its next directive or order, as the case may be.
What is noteworthy is that after his victory, Verma returned to the core issue: funding, stating that the association has found sponsorship worth Rs 40 million.
Then came the tussle between Hockey India and the Indian Hockey Federation and the Indian Women’s Hockey Federation, the latter declaring its polls, and the former then saying that those polls would be illegal. However, when Hockey India finally had its own general body meeting, completely in-camera, not allowing the media even to cross the gate of Hotel Lalit, let alone sit in the lounge area, it did allow a central observer.
Hockey India has only one sahara (supporter) in the Sahara Group, but that is for the team and not for any event and it is not known to be a rich federation.
Then came the table tennis test event, and the federation announced ten sponsors for the event, though it does not have any sponsor for the Indian team.
This patching up of sponsors is a bit suspicious: much earlier, the federation had given a figure of Rs 9.6 million that it would need to organise the event and for prize money. It never so happens that any such event gets just that much of sponsors, but the TT federation got that exact amount… how? The declaration of having so many sponsors can be interpreted as an effort by the TT federation to claim at a later stage that it would not come under the ministry. It is one more sniper shot fired in the guerilla warfare between the ministry and the IOA, led by the two Singhs, themselves untouchable, watching the battle from IOA Bhawan and Shastri Bhawan respectively
Surprisingly, even the badminton Asian Championship, with a star like Saina Nehwal playing, did not claim so much of sponsorship money: it was ‘expecting’ Rs 7 million in sponsorship, it had said. So where will the Rs 40 mn Verma is boasted about come from?
Boxing has sponsors, but so far the boxing federation has not spoken against the ministry… so where does it stand?
It stands where the others stand: neither here nor there. Barring boxing, badminton and football, none of the federations have found sponsors. So far they have been surviving on government support. The rifle federation had to borrow rifles for the long-distance shooting test event; the cycling federation says it has not been sponsored ‘even a cycle tyre or tube’, and even requested SportzPower to help find sponsors!
So the curious picture is that the IOC will not allow government intervention, and survival depends on sponsorship, which is not there.
The court will decide in its wisdom what is best for sports in the country. The government has given money to federations but most of it has been misused by government agencies. So where will Raja Randhir Singh get the sponsors for his wards from?
The IOC has issued warnings to the government, making it impossible for any federation to dare subjugate itself to the Sports Ministry.
The Olympic Charter is a global convention accepted by all countries in the world, and it is agreed that there cannot be a separate set of rules for India. It is not expected that the official sent to Lausanne HQ of the Committee will raise a banner of revolt and risk derecognition. But then where is the end to this?
If the Sports Ministry comes back agreeing to the IOC, it will then easily withdraw all funding for the federations, which will then have to be put in the ICU of Indian sports.
There seems to be only one solution: the government sits down with IOA and spells out the quantum of its annual funding for the federations, and the IOA agrees to bring in matching funding. If they do, they can then claim the right to run their own federations, but allow government officials to become observers. That is something one could look at!
