The acting president of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), Prof. Vijay Kumar Malhotra, expressed his helplessness to fix a date for a meeting with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in view of the continued rigid stand of the Union Sports Ministry.
This was stated in a letter addressed to the IOC President Jacques Rogge, on Thursday.
“We are rather constrained to say that the Ministry of Sports, Government of India, is bent on destroying the autonomy of the IOA and the National Sports Federations. The same is not acceptable to us,” he wrote in the letter.
Prof. Malhotra said that the IOA had approached the government at the behest of the IOC for a dialogue, and to fix a meeting in Lausanne, but, “it has gone ahead and constituted a committee to redraft the controversial sports bill, which is in total breach of the Olympic Charter.”
Further stressing the point, Prof. Malhotra said, “the government has not taken us into confidence on any count and has not shown any interest in respecting your directive to find a common ground to end this deadlock.”
The acting IOA president said that despite the government guidelines in the form of the Sports Code having led to the suspension of the IOA by the IOC, “the whole exercise is being repeated by the government in the form of a sports bill, trying to give it a colour of a new legislation.”
Stating that the IOA had already sought clarity on the subject from the Union Sports Ministry, Prof. Malhotra sought guidance from the IOC, about the course of action to be followed in the run-up to the meeting at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne.
