The Hindu : Sport : ‘Willing to discuss contentious points’

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Wednesday, Aug 29, 2007
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Sport - Sports : General

‘Willing to discuss contentious points’

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Union Sports Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar said on Monday that his ministry was willing to discuss all contentious points with the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) regarding the setting up of the sports regulatory authority proposed in the draft National Sports Policy.

Responding to a “flurry of statements” from the IOA on the issue, the “latest arrow” being a letter from the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) Chief, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, about the need to preserve autonomy, the minister said that the draft was prepared after taking the Olympic Charter into consideration.

Mr. Aiyar said that he was prepared to sit with the IOA and discuss all issues, especially the points relating to autonomy. “We have the Olympic Charter and the OCA bye-laws readily available in the ministry…We should be told where we are violating the Olympic Charter,” he said.

Parliamentary issue

The minister explained that in order to bring sports into the Concurrent List, another contentious issue mentioned in the draft policy, he would need the support of two-thirds of the members sitting and voting in the Lok Sabha and the approval of half of the States. It would go to Parliament only after the Law Ministry cleared the proposal, taking everything, including the Olympic Charter, into consideration, and the Cabinet approved it.

The Sports Minister said that disputes within federations and complaints against them by sportspersons were being brought to his ministry on a regular basis.

“NSFs cannot be judges” on all these matters concerning their own functioning, Mr. Aiyar said. That was why an independent regulatory authority was being contemplated, he added.

Mr. Aiyar, not the one to mince words, said that if public money was being spent, then the Government was answerable in Parliament and cannot possibly say that the IOA was autonomous and he was not in a position to answer any questions relating to the IOA or the National Sports Federations (NSFs). He said that had the IOA and the NSFs (barring cricket) been financially independent then the question of a regulatory authority would not have arisen even. He wondered if every penny being given to the Organising Committee for the conduct of the 2010 Commonwealth Games was to be returned then where was the problem for it in approaching a bank for a loan.

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