The Hindu : Sport : Sports Minister calls for “clean accounts”

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Thursday, Apr 24, 2008
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Sports Minister calls for “clean accounts”

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Union Sports Minister, M.S. Gill, on Wednesday urged the Olympic Movement to show responsibility in making "clean use" of the Government funds and wanted the National federations to provide "clean accounts."

Inaugurating a workshop organised by the Athletics Federation of India (AFI), Mr. Gill said that he needed more money for his ministry but wanted to make sure that it was "put to good use also."

Simple policy

In response to a suggestion from the President of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), Suresh Kalmadi, that the 2001 National Sports Policy be activated rather than a new sports policy brought in, Mr. Gill said that there was no need to add "more English" to the policy and his policy would be simple, to put India on top of the world sports.

The Sports Minister did not refer to the draft comprehensive National Sports Policy that had run into considerable opposition from the IOA and the National federations who were critical of the former Sports Minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar for what they termed were government’s attempts to erode their autonomy.

Mr. Kalmadi claimed that the new draft National Sports Policy "did not go through the Cabinet" for various reasons.

Mr. Gill said that his attempts would be to promote sport for the aam aadmi (common man) that included athletics, hockey, football, volleyball and basketball.

Mr. Gill wanted the federations to look for "young and positive" people to take over their functioning. "You go forward, I will be with you" were his parting words.

AFI revamping calendar

The AFI, in its workshop to revamp the competition calendar from 2009, talked about bringing in more money into the sport.

The AFI Secretary, Lalit Bhanot, said that there were plans to include eight to 10 Grand Prix meets in the calendar with substantial prize money for every meet.

The funds were to be mainly raised from the capitation fee charged for allotting marathons. The aim was to raise around Rs. 50 crore annually.

The Working President of the AFI, Adille Sumariwala, said: "We haven’t realised that we have a property that after IPL is the biggest in Indian sports."

Sumariwala cited the example of London Marathon which he said raised Rs. 400 crore annually.

The AFI was already charging Rs. 50 lakh from the Delhi Half Marathon and Rs. 20 lakh from the Mumbai Marathon. The approval for next year’s events was pending since there had been no long-term agreement.

Proposals were also made for having more international competitions, special cash awards for ‘athlete of the year’ and ‘coach of the year’, among others, and for AFI to bid for a big championship in the near future apart from hosting an IAAF Grand Prix meet.

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