Express News Service
CHENNAI: The amended Indian Olympic Association constitution was adopted on Thursday during the Special General Meeting. There were objections raised but the constitution was ratified and adopted and there were no changes added or deleted as of now. Election process has started and as far as the one-member committee of retired judge L Nageswara Rao’s amended constitution is concerned, it is in force.
The notice for IOA Annual General Meeting and elections on December 10 too was issued late on Friday. Secretary General Rajiv Mehta sent the notice to the members of the International Olympic Committee, affiliated members of the IOA and the Athletes’ Commission of the IOA. According to the amended constitution, affiliated members should constitute two representatives, provided one is female and one male, of the National Sports Federations part of the Olympic, Asian and Commonwealth Games programmes.
The two-point agenda includes “formal ratification of incorporating Sportspersons on Outstanding Merit into the General Assembly and election of executive committee of the IOA for the term 2022-2026”. And any other items.
The IOA had approached the court on Friday and sought urgent hearing on the objections raised during the SGM, but in a big setback, the court said it will be heard on the date decided earlier on December 7. The election date is on December 10. And the nominations and electoral college will be decided before December 7.
Yet, as expected there was drama even on Friday. Chaos would be an understatement. Even when most of the senior members are facing the exit door, the two factions within the IOA were oblivious to the threat and were fighting among themselves. Such was the lack of understanding that on Friday morning there were two sets of minutes of the meeting in circulation. One was signed by Mehta (later apparently it was withdrawn) and another by Rakesh Gupta, who said in the minutes that he was the official minutes keeper as mandated by the majority of the house.
Entire proceedings of the meeting were on camera and whatever transpired inside is on record, including who said what. Mehta had said on Thursday that the house had adopted the constitution with minor changes but going by Gupta’s minutes, there were quite a few changes suggested. As mentioned in our report, some of the points raised by IOA senior vice president Anil Khanna, who is part of Mehta camp, were: State Olympic Association should have two votes in the general assembly, one male and one female representative would be difficult to implement in short notice, the definition of office bearers must not include the entire Executive Council.
The other faction, according to Gupta’s minutes, too raised similar points but they wanted one vote for all SOAs and that office-bearers as defined by sports code should be restricted to president, secretary and treasurer and age restriction should be limited to these three. Since the objections remain as objections until the Supreme Court hearing in December, it will be futile to delve too deep into them.
Another issue was whether the constitution would be applied in retrospective effect or prospective. If previous ECs are also considered as office bearers then most members will be ineligible to contest elections.
The election process of the Athletes’ Commission has already started. And if any federation fails to send names, then the sport will go unrepresented. As reported by this newspaper, the 10 elected Athletes’ panel will then select the eight Sportspersons of Outstanding Merit, who will be part of the general body. Umesh Sinha, who has been appointed as the returning officer for the elections, would be looking into the formation of Athlete’s Commission. Last date for application of SOMs is November 14.
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