Faced with a threat of disaffiliation from its parent body, the IOA on Saturday said that it had not violated the Olympic Charter nor the government guidelines in its election process and the International Olympic Council should not take action against it.
Talking to reporters in Delhi, IOA acting chief V.K. Malhotra said the Election Commission of retired judges of High Court have not found any violation of rules for the controversy-marred elections to be held on December 5.
“These elections are not violating any of the three Codes — Olympic Charter, Sports Code and Delhi High Court order. No nominations have been rejected by the Election Commission. We hope the IOC does not take action against us since there are no violations,” Malhotra said.
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“For the first time in IOA history, elections are being held under a three-member Election Commission of retired High Court judges and there was no rejection of nomination papers on any pretext. The whole exercise is very fair, free and transparent,” he said.
In its latest letter, the IOC had made it clear that it would propose disaffiliation of IOA in its executive board meeting on December 4-5 if the national body goes ahead with the elections under the government’s Sports Code.
Malhotra, however, said “as things stand” there was no interference from the government and the election process was held as per the IOA Constitution and Olympic Charter.
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“For the first time, we had a meeting with the Sports Minister and it was a very constructive meeting and we are hoping to sort out the issue,” he added.
“We are confident that the IOC will appreciate IOA’s point of view and will not do anything, which will have adverse impact on the Olympic movement in India,” he added.
Malhotra said the IOA has resolutely opposed the application of government guidelines for the last two years but had to obey the Delhi Court order, which directed to apply both the Sports Code and IOA Constitution.
“IOA has many a times called upon the government to scrape this ill-conceived Code. We met the Prime Minister last year and after that have been repeatedly voicing our concern to this so-called Code and other attempts by the government to interfere in the affairs of the IOA and NSFs,” Malhotra said.
“The IOA was caught in a very piquant situation. On the one hand, the government of India had threatened it with de-recognition if it does not accept the Sports Code. The High Court had directed that elections should be conducted according to the IOA Constitution and Sports Code and the IOC has insisted that there should be no violation of its Charter and interference by the government,” he said.