The tenure tussle

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The Commonwealth Co-Ordination Commission (Co-Com) was in session at the convention hall of Delhi's Ashok Hotel. Speeches had been made and the burning issues of the controversy-magnet called the 2010 Commonwealth Games were being discussed. One at a time, the leading lights of the Games Organising Committee sidled out of the hall, very clearly on high alert.Outside, these men in suits were found in whispered huddles because a real crisis had broken out. It was not about the Games deadlines, or the Co-Com opinion or even a fractious Games CEO. For these men, what was under threat was something more personal, and therefore more precious-their own turf as India's most powerful Olympic sports administrators.What emerged from that huddle in the hotel was a battle plan to tackle the bitter war declared upon them by the sports minister. M.S. Gill wants to rewrite the fine print in Indian sports administration. Its office bearers though, men who resent even a raised eyebrow, want to hold and control their own ground.What began as an arm wrestle between Gill, Union minister for youth affairs and sport, and Suresh Kalmadi, president of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), has turned into a boxing bout between the ministry and a phalanx of Kalmadi's allies. The allies comprise India's least successful but longest-serving sports bosses. Given that what is being sought is a limitation of the tenure of officials, no wonder everyone is involved.There are many fronts in this battle. The Delhi High Court, currently hearing an extremely well-drafted PIL sends out a few tremors every week. Emergency missives have gone out to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and appeals to the Prime Minister's Office. The documents being flung on either side include a revolutionary sports policy of 1975 put into permafrost a decade ago, the Olympic charter and a spate of e-mails.After Gill and Kalmadi the latest man in the headlights is Randhir Singh, India's sole IOC representative. He is accused of a 'conflict of interest' over the tenure issue, after he waved letters of support from the IOC and the president of the Olympic Council of Asia.This week, 20 federation heads squashed themselves into a room at the Commonwealth Games headquarters, including members of the Parliament, politicians from all parties, current bureaucrats and businessmen to demonstrate their solidarity against the ministry restoring the 1975 government guideline limiting the tenure. The guideline states that federation presidents can serve 12 years, and secretaries and treasurers two terms of four years each, and an age cap of 70.Between the officials in that room were more than 200 collective years of sports administration but only 18 Olympic medals (including 11 in hockey, which was last earned in 1980). By their account what was under threat by a 'draconian law' was their 'autonomy' and India's Olympic existence."We will not accept this financial blackmail," thundered one. Jagdish Tytler, head of the Judo Federation of India, said plaintively that honorary officials like his brethren around him were "spending our time and leaving our businesses to be involved in sport". Badminton's V.K. Verma said "there is total transparency in Indian sports federations" and that the Federation raised five times the money "than what the Government provided".The ministry is not quaking in its boots. A senior official would head to the Olympic headquarters in Lausanne to discuss the issue there. Singh is undeterred, "They are planning a fruitless trip. The IOC will welcome them but they're not going to change the Olympic charter or make special concessions for India.""Officials have to perform themselves and try to egg on and bring up athletes. That's not happening in most of our sports."Abhinav Bindra, Olympic champThe Ministry cites the IOC's executive board rules which have tenure and age limits on its office-bearers as an example of "best practice" that India needs to follow. Tenure limits were, a statement said, "widely prevalent and internationally accepted; and is also one of the critical ingredients of good governance".Singh says all national sports federations have different rules. Insisting India follow what is actually an "IOC election process" is just a step on the road to "get India suspended from the Olympic movement".Depending which side you are on this could be a sound argument or mere semantics. The athletes are baffled. "Isn't 10 years a long time? What do these guys want? To be reincarnated in the same office? To have 10 lives?" asked one Olympian.If this was a popularity contest, then none of the officials in that room would have been able to win a vote from a current athlete, be it Kalmadi or archery's Vijay Kumar Malhotra, now inching close to four decades in office. The outspoken former world billiards champion Michael Ferreira says, "This churning is necessary in Indian sport. Progress requires change-you need people with new ideas, fresh ideas, guys with get-up-and-go. Otherwise you get fossilised. I find this pathetic clinging to power absolutely amazing." The clinging is to 'honorary' posts, what should actually be considered thankless jobs. That they do so implies that the gains are either political-like for Abhay Singh Chautala to support Haryana's boxers and build up his popularity in his state or, as IOA's obsession for mega events shows, financial.The federations first said the timing of the government regulation would affect morale around the Commonwealth Games preparations. When that could not be sustained, came the ultimate threat-Olympic expulsion. Like what had happened to Kuwait in January. Beijing gold medallist Abhinav Bindra asks, "It is not as if the Government is taking over sports, are they?" Kuwait was suspended from the Olympics because its Olympic committee was unable to amend a law allowing government involvement in sports federations elections.The law in India is, however, taking its own very correct and rigorous course. In Delhi High Court the goalposts have not so much shifted as it has been stretched due to the PIL from a young Delhi lawyer, who may well turn out to be the firestarter that Indian sports administration deserves.In 2000, Rahul Mehra asked questions about the functioning of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in a PIL. Four years later the Delhi High Court ruled that the BCCI was a private body that performed public functions and was, therefore, accountable to the public. After a two-year break in which he did his day job of litigation in civil and criminal cases and setting up a sports law firm, Mehra put his mind to this wider universe in 2006. His PIL has reached a point where even the ministry has been pushed to indicate its intent to improve.By the time he finished his research, Mehra's PIL was 150 pages long with as many as 73 National Sports Federations being questioned.Its respondents are now just 13 who are topped up by the Union of India through the Ministry of Human Resource Development (Department of Sports and Youth Affairs), the Sports Authority of India (SAI), the Netaji Subhash National Institute of Sports and IOA and federations of key sports like athletics, badminton, boxing, chess, football, hockey, shooting, tennis and weightlifting.The case is being heard by the Delhi High Court Division Bench No.1 with acting chief justices Madan B. Lokur and Mukta Gupta and all the lawyers hauled in are sweating.The case is up next in court on April 19, during which the Sports Ministry has a weighty to-do list: to file an affidavit of their response, review of the electoral colleges structure of all sports federations, find minutes of several meetings and a report by a Core Group formed in 2001, after the 1975 order about tenure was put on hold.Regardless of what the meeting with the IOC is like or what happens to Gill in the political hurly burly, the federations will next be questioned about their electorates. The 1975 regulation said 25 per cent of every Federation's voting bank had to include the sport's eminent athletes; in real teams the numbers barely add up to five per cent.Gill is confident that he will be able to follow through by persistence alone. Yet, it is not as if the ministry's own practices are flawless. SAI is expected to nurture talent and support federations in training and coaching is a bureaucratic labyrinth. Where tenders are invited for athletic equipment and then awarded to the lowest bidder as if it were sand being purchased. Bad practice is how a Rs 50-crore full bore rifle range is already set up but shooters have had to borrow rifles to practice. In any case, the range will be of no use after the 2010 Games as the event is not found in other international events.Bindra says, "Elsewhere the athlete is the No.1 priority, the No.1 stake holder in sport. In India, it is like most athletes do not exist." This overall systems failure, thanks to federations and government alike, has led to a poisonous mutation of Indian sports. It is why five months before the 2010 Games, the spotlight is not on our athletes, but our squabbling administrators.Follow us on Twitter!

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