Is it going to be redrafted sports code or Bill?

The National Sports Development Code is in the news again.

Nothing surprising there. It hits the headlines periodically, especially when almost everyone in the country, bar the sports officials, are clamouring for more accountability and transparency in the functioning of the National Sports Federations (NSFs).

The Sports Code, compiled first in 2011, clubbing the 1975 Government guidelines with a series of government notifications through the years, is supposed to be a substitute for the National Sports Development Bill.

The draft for such a Bill was brought forward by the then Sports Minister Ajay Maken in 2011 but it was shot down by the Cabinet and the ministry asked to redraft the document. Since then there had been several attempts to revive the draft Bill though without success.
The last one heard about the draft Bill (till the Attorney General mentioned a fresh move by the Centre during the cricket case hearings in the Supreme Court) was in July 2013 when Justice Mukul Mudgal who headed a committee that redrafted the 2011 draft, submitted its report to the Union Sports Ministry.

Mahajan committee report stayed

But the Sports Code remained and the draft Bill continued to be put on the backburner. The ministry formed a committee under Justice C. K. Mahajan (retd.) in 2015 to redraft the Sports Code. But Rahul Mehra, the lawyer-turned-sports activist who has brought about a whole lot of changes in the structure and functioning of the NSFs, obtained a stay against the finalization of Justice Mahajan headed committee’s report.

In the wake of the Lodha Committee report on cricket reforms and the Supreme Court ruling there were demands that the rest of the National sports bodies also follow the changes enforced by the SC in the case of cricket.

Aggravating the situation for the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) and the NSFs was an ill-timed attempt by the former to bring in two of the “tainted” officials, Suresh Kalmadi and Abhay Chautala, as Life Presidents of the IOA. A hurried decision to this effect at its Chennai meeting had to be backtracked when the Government intervened and suspended its “deemed recognition” of the IOA.

The ministry’s response came on predictable lines. It formed yet another committee, this time headed by the man who drafted the 2011 code and presented the Government view before the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne in 2010, Injeti Srinivas.

Srinivas currently holds dual charge of Secretary, Sports Ministry, and Director General, Sports Authority of India (SAI) which he was till elevated to the Secretary’s post.

Srinivas knows the IOA and the NSFs inside out; he also knows the Olympic Charter and the history of government control or legislation in sports in other countries, not to speak of the basic principles of good governance which the IOC endorses. In short, he is the most experienced bureaucrat in the Government today who can handle one of the knottiest issues Indian sports has faced over four decades_the extent of autonomy of the NSFs including the IOA.

Before the ministry could announce the recommendations of the Srinivas committee which also included badminton legend Prakash Padukone, Mehra approached the Delhi High Court once again and obtained another stay against the committee publishing its “findings”. (He has now said through a tweet the court has asked the ministry to submit the redrafted code) 

The redrafted Sports Code would not be confined to just tenure or age restrictions of officials, but as we have seen in the past and as we are seeing in respect of the BCCI and state units’ discomfort in implementing the Lodha panel stipulations currently, it all comes down to tenure and age guidelines for the most part.

Will the Srinivas committee opt for the Lodha formula? That is three years each of three terms with a three-year cooling off period after each term? Or will it go by the existing Government guideline (for non-cricket bodies) of two terms of four years each with the President of the Federation getting a third term?

The third term for the president was a concession granted by the then Sports Minister M. S. Gill. The 70-year stipulation was also brought in during his time.

Can there be more concessions to the NSFs? Or could there be tougher stipulations on the lines of the BCCI reforms ordered by the Lodha panel?

Twenty-eight sportspersons have filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court urging it to extend Lodha panel recommendations to the rest of the national sports federations.

The disclosure by the Attorney General in Supreme Court that the Government was mulling a legislation to provide more autonomy to the federations took almost everyone by surprise. Could the ministry have formed a committee to redraft the sports code even as it was redrafting the Sports Bill that had been put in cold storage?

Sports Minister Goel has ruled out the possibility of diluting the code in recent reports. He was of the opinion that eventually his ministry would come up with a code that would be acceptable to all the NSFs?

The feeling has yet persisted that the attempt was to bail out the BCCI. How, is a question that only the ministry can answer unless we wait for the code or the Bill to get its final shape and is announced.

Before the draft Bill is taken up by the Government it will have to sort out the issue of Concurrent List. Sports is a state subject. By bringing it into Concurrent List, a move made sometime in the 1980s also, the Centre would be able to legislate on sports without any limitations.

Minister Goel was quoted in recent reports that the process of bringing sports into the Concurrent List had reached a decisive stage. Surprisingly, he also told Parliament in a written reply in December last that there was no move.

An Act of Parliament will provide more teeth to the ministry’s guidelines though courts have till now endorsed the authority of the government to enforce the stipulations in the Sports Code as far as the NSFs were concerned.

Though the Centre’s powers to enact legislation in sports dealing with national federations and India’s representation in the international arena etc had been re-iterated it is the state-level sports bodies that have continued to pose a question. For this the Centre needs the support of the States.

However, a Central Government Act is not something that the IOC would welcome, especially if it contains stipulations on the tenure and election process etc of the national federations and the NOC.

In the past the Government had tried to brush aside suggestions, though informally, that the IOC would tangle in any way with regard to its guidelines for the functioning of the NSFs including the IOA. Its belief was that India was too large a democracy, too big a nation, too important a country for the IOC to meddle with.

That belief was rudely shattered in December 2012 when the IOC suspended the IOA. Even now, in several media reports, that suspension is attributed to the election of Abhay Chautala and Lalit Bhanot as president and secretary of the IOA when they were faced with charges of financial irregularities, but the fact remained the IOC said at that time that it was primarily due to ‘government interference”. The fact also remained that the IOA was suspended even before it held its elections. In short it was a combination of factors that contributed to the IOC sanction.

IOC resists encroachment

The IOC has always resisted any attempt by governments to impose rules from outside, either through legislation or through norms laid down in documents such as the sports code. Thought it wants NOCs and federations to incorporate principles of good governance that may include tenure restrictions it also wants them to have the freedom to be governed by its own rules without a Government Act dictating such a course of action. Towards that purpose it has always expressed its willingness to engage authorities in a dialogue.

Though the National Federations had agreed in principle to incorporate the Sports Code in toto not many have done that by amending their constitutions. Even when they have included certain rules they have done away with some others.

The Athletics Federation of India (AFI), for example, has three categories of membership, determined by points earned by their athletes in national meets, Olympic representation etc. Category I member has three votes in the General Assembly, Category II has two and the rest, mainly comprising institutional units, one vote each.

From the 1975 guidelines, the government had stipulated the policy of one-state-one-vote, something that the Lodha panel has also enforced, thus curtailing the voting rights of such a cricketing powerhouse as Mumbai.

The IOA continues to have State Olympic Associations as its members with full voting rights, much against the demands of the Sports Ministry and the wishes of the IOC. The vote-bank politics of the IOA perforce provides a lifeline to these state units which come alive only during the National Games in most cases.

What the Charter says

The Olympic Charter says an NOC may comprise National Federations governing sports in the Olympic programme, IOC members, if any in that country, and athletes’ representatives. It may also include federations outside the Olympic programme but recognized by the IOC.

The top two officials of the IOA at the moment (N. Ramachandran and Rajiv Mehta) are both outside Olympic sports, something that the Indian NOC cannot be proud of. Mehta's sport, kho-kho, in fact does not even have the IOC recognition.

The IOC had suggested in 2011 that State Olympic associations could be included as associate members in the IOA without voting rights. But by 2013 the IOC was no longer insisting on this stipulation though the government continued to insist that state bodies be kept out of voting.

Through the past six years the Sports Ministry has attempted to dilute the Sports Code, especially the tenure clause. It is to be seen if the redrafted code would tighten the rules even if they do not replicate the Lodha panel reforms for the BCCI. (Lawyer Mehra tweeted on March 21, that he would expose the ‘dirty game’ being played by Government officials in Delhi High Court on March 22 when his PIL on sports is scheduled to come up.

What happens to the revised code prepared by the Mahajan committee? Will the whole effort be wasted in the wake of the Srinivas committee report? Or will it eventually be a hurriedly-redrafted National Sports Development Bill that the ministry may spring?

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