India back into Olympic fold

There was a critical meeting held in Lausanne, Switzerland at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to discuss India’s role in the Olympic Fold where it was decided that India will return to the Olympic fold. The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) has decided to have new elections and hold another AGM or Annual General Meeting, flagging a way for its come back after the ban, that was placed last year, was lifted. The Indian member for IOC, Randhir Singh, and the acting president of IOA, VK Malhotra, refrained from attending the meeting after the inclusion of Narinder Batra, (general secretary of Hockey India) and RK Anand (from Jharkhand Olympic Association) as IOA delegates in addition to a list comprising of 4 members that was submitted earlier.

The 4 members were Sports Minister Jitendra Singh, Sports Secretary PK Deb and among the sports persons we had Abhinav Bindra, Olympics gold medallist shooter and also Olympian sailor, Malav Shroff .

There are a lot of changes that the IOA seeks to implement, for which they feel they might take a span of 75 days. One of them would be to revise the constitution of IOA. Some of the noticeable reforms are that none of the office bearers of NSF or National Sports Federation should be above the age of 70; these office bearers will not get more than 3 terms and the code of ethics of IOC will also be incorporated.

Jitendra Singh has said, “IOC has decided to pave the way to lift ban on IOA. Indian athletes will join Olympic movement soon. It is not my victory but a win for the country, sportspersons and all of us.”

“We told IOC that we do not want to interfere in the matters of NSFs. We respect their freedom. But since tax payers money is involved, we would like them to be more transparent.”

NSF can now be free from the domination of persuasive bureaucrats and politicians. VK Malhotra and Jagdish Tyler (judo) now have no say in the activities and proceedings of NSF.