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Hockey defeat shameful, says Aiyar

Mani Shankar Aiyar

NEW DELHI: Repeatedly stressing the helplessness of the Union government in interfering with the functioning of autonomous National Sports Federations (NSFs), Union Sports Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar on Monday termed the Indian hockey team’s failure to qualify for Olympics “disappointing and shameful.”

Reacting to a flurry of questions dealing with the hockey debacle in Santiago, Mr. Aiyar said he was as pained as any other Indian in accepting the fact that for the first time in 80 years an Indian hockey team would not figure in the Olympics.

However, the Minister refused to be drawn into any discussion over the steps that his Ministry could take with regard to the functioning of the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF), the utilisation of Australian coach Ric Charlesworth and all allied matters, pleading that the Olympic Charter prohibited government interference in the functioning of the NSFs.

There was no move to seek a report from the IHF right now, but Mr. Aiyar expected questions to come up over the performance in the coming days in Parliament and said that explanations could then be sought from the federation.

“We will respect the [Olympic] Charter, but I do not think the Charter stands in the way of better functioning,” Mr. Aiyar said. He added that there was no scope for drastic action following the disappointing performance of the hockey team.

Asked about the failure of the IHF to let Mr. Charlesworth accompany the team to Chile, Mr. Aiyar said that when the IHF did not want the Aussie coach to go, then his Ministry could not have ruled otherwise.

“When the IHF wants Charlesworth to be associated with the under-21 programme,” then the Ministry was helpless in assigning him any other role, he said. The Minister pointed out that the Indian Women’s Hockey Federation was interested in utilising the services of the Australian coach.

The final contract with Mr. Charlesworth was yet to be signed and details were still being worked out, the Joint Secretary, Sports Ministry, I. Sreenivas, stated.

Mr. Charlesworth had been brought in under a programme jointly funded by the International Olympic Committee through the FIH and the Union Sports Ministry.

Asked about the provisions in the government guidelines regarding the tenure of office-bearers and the government’s inability to enforce the guidelines, Mr. Sreenivas said that since 2003, the guidelines in regard to the tenure had been kept in abeyance.

The question came up when the Minister pleaded his helplessness in interfering with the election process of the federations, notwithstanding the continuation of the same set of office-bearers for decades with disastrous results.

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