Indian Hockey Federation fixes guns on IOA
Indian Hockey Federation (IHF), the self-claimed governing body of the sport, leveled charges against Indian Olympic Association (IOA) regarding its dual standards in resolving the dispute between the two competing federations, the IHF and Hockey India.
The blame-game started a day after the association asked the two bodies, the IHF and Hockey India, to settle the matters while submitting a merger report within a short span of three-weeks.
The federation believes that IOA is violating the rules and procedures in a bid to protect Hockey India. Ashok Mathur, Secretary General of IHF, claimed that the association went out of its way to reject the proposal of amalgamation between the two units.
He underlined, “The settlement between IHF and HI was reached on 25th July, 2011 which was purely an internal arrangement, but was promptly rejected by the IOA and FIH. The IOA is also playing double standard since it recognizes IHF as per court order and
on the other hand writes to Government and FIH to deal with Hockey India. This is how they are protecting a body which was illegally formed”.
Following the directives of Sports Ministry of India, the two warring units reached an interim order to govern the sport in the country.
The association released the warning ultimatum after all the stakeholders including Sports Ministry, IOA, IHF and HI failed to reach any conclusion in the meeting held on October 15, 2011.
All the parties are working hurriedly to settle the dispute, as Federation of International Hockey (FIH) warned India that its team will be excluded from the race to Olympic Qualifiers, if it failed to resolve the governing issues.
In the mean time, IHF flayed criticism on FIH claiming that the world body wanted to ride over the Indian hockey.
In IHF’s views, the international unit was blackmailing the Indian officials for pulling out their squad from the international tournaments.
The IHF statement clarified that they were willing to make a settlement in the power-sharing formula in the best interest of the sport as well as the country. However, they also criticised Hockey India terming them as the ‘cause of mess’ in the sport.
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