Delhi High Court hands over affairs of Indian Olympic Association to temporary CoA; strikes down provisions of IOA Constitution

The Delhi High Court has appointed a Committee of Administrators (CoA) to handle the affairs of Indian Olympic Association (IOA) and carry out its day-to-day governance till a new Executive Committee is lawfully elected..The CoA will include former Supreme Court judge, Justice Anil R Dave, former Chief Election Commissioner Dr SY Qureshi and former foreign secretary Vikas Swarup.They will be assisted by Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra, Olympian long-jumper Anju Bobby George and Olympian archer Bombayla Devi Laishram..A Division Bench of Justices Manmohan and Najmi Waziri directed the erstwhile Executive Committee of the IOA to hand over the charge of the association to the CoA which will now be tasked with preparation and adoption of a new Constitution as per the Sports Code and court rulings and conduct of elections within 16 weeks..Affairs of the IOA will then be handed over by the CoA to the democratically elected body, the Court said..The Court also directed the Centre government not to grant recognition or any facility to the IOA or to any National Sports Federation (NSF) or any of its affiliated associations if they refuse to comply with the Sports Code as directed by the High Court.It further said that it is high time that structural reforms are implemented to remove the mismanagement in the sports bodies and to democratise these institutions.“The Centre and State governments may well consider passing a comprehensive legislation with regard to recognition and management of sports bodies incorporating the best practices and the IOC Charter without which no facility (monetary or otherwise) should be granted by any State and Union of India,” the Court said..The judges said that though the logical corollary to the discussion in the judgment would be that IOA would disqualify itself from retention of its recognition as a sports federation because of non-compliance with the Sports Code and the law of the land, the IOA's recognition will not be disturbed, for the duration that the COA assists in bringing IOA's affairs in order."If the compliance is not done by IOA, within the time specified hereinabove, its recognition by the Government shall stand suspended. The urgency for cooperation with the CoA and onus for compliance with the Sports Code is upon the IOA," the Court said..The Court further ordered that all NSFs complying with the Sports Code and representing Olympic sports, will automatically qualify for IOA membership subject to completion of formalities. It said that the application of Indian Golf Union for recognition shall also be considered by the IOA within four weeks for full voting rights and it shall be a part of the electoral college. .The Court was dealing with a petition by Senior Advocate Rahul Mehra seeking directions to IOA and NSFs to comply with the National Sports Development Code of India, 2011 (also known as Sports Code) and the judicial orders issued from time to time.He demanded that recognition of defaulting NSFs should be suspended and government patronage and the benefits the NSFs reap from government largesse should also be withdrawn..Apart from passing orders for appointment of a CoA, the Court has also made certain strong observations on many other aspects of the problems with the functioning of IOA and NSFs.The Court observed that certain individuals have converted these bodies into their personal fiefdoms and, therefore, struck down several controversial and problematic practices in functioning of these institutions. Below are some of them..No entity like lifetime PresidentThe Court said that there is no room for a permanent post in any NSF or the IOA and, therefore, the post of lifetime President or any such permanent post in the IOA were struck down as Illegal.“The tenure of each EC is fixed. Life itself is finite. So is a game of sport. Nobody can contemplate of a permanent position in any organization which discharges public functions and receives government funds and recognition. Indeed, it would be sporting, democratic and honourable for an individual to gracefully move-on in life once her/his tenure of office gets over. There is no place for staleness,” the Court observed..Differential voting rights cannot be permittedThe IOA constitution provided that NSFs that represent a sport included in the Olympic/Asian/Commonwealth Games and the NSFs of indigenous games like Kho-Kho are to have three representatives with one vote each. However, the Olympic associations of States and Union Territories had only two representatives.This was despite the Sports Code providing that each permanent member will be represented by two delegates with a vote each.The Court said that this differential voting right denotes that some entities are of lesser value or significance and the principle is per se iniquitous and undemocratic.“There cannot be a half voter or a one 1/3rd voter. This anomalous weightage in votes to different entities is neither contemplated in the Sports Code nor in the IOC Charter,” the Court said striking down the same. .Only NSFs for Olympic disciplines should be members of IOA with voting rightsThe Court noted that out of the 56 NSFs recognised by the government, only 29 represent Olympic sports.Two votes each cast by each member from the latter category would equal 54 votes which would create a “vote bank” in favour of the Executive Committee member who may have granted membership to them, the Court said.It further stated that there should be no State Olympic Associations (SOAs) and if such an association are members of the IOA, they will neither have voting rights nor will their members be elected to the IOA EC or discharge any position of authority or control. They will not be funded, patronised or supported in any manner by the government..Other observations/directions.A person against whom criminal charges have been framed should not be permitted to be a member either of the EC or the General Assembly;Non-determination of the Electoral College by the IOA is in contravention of judicial orders and contrary to the objectives of the Sports Code;Age and tenure limits should be applied to all members of the Executive Committee and General Assembly of IOA, and not only to President, Secretary and Treasurer;Persons seeking successive reelection for the same post must secure two-thirds majority;Executive Committee’s size should be reasonable and not unwieldy;There cannot be any restrictive, undemocratic clause, regarding elections to any post;IOA Constitution permits a person to hold office for 20 years without undergoing a cooling-off period, this must be rectified in accordance with the law of the land, i.e., not more than three tenures along with cooling-off period(s);IOA must have independent Ethics, Athletes, Election and Arbitration Commissions, and an Ombudsman, devoid of any control, direct or indirect, by the IOA. These Commissions must be funded by the government from the budgetary allocation for NSFs including IOA;Appointment of 25 percent prominent sportspersons of outstanding merit with voting rights in General Assembly and EC is mandatory;The Sports Code must be made applicable to the IOA and to every constituent NSFs..Senior Advocate Rahul Mehra appeared in person along with advocates Chaitanya Gosain and Amanpreet Singh. Senior Advocate Sachin Datta along with CGSC Anil Soni, Vinayak Sharma, advocates Devesh Dubey, Neetu Devrani, Himanshu Goel, Sanjib Amit Acharya and Subesh K Sahoo appeared for UOI and Sports Authority of India. Advocates Shyel Trehan and Bhagya K Yadav appeared for IOA president. Senior Advocate DN Goburdhun along with advocates Ruchir Mishra, Hemant Phalpher, Hrishikesh Baruah, Parth Goswami, Pranav Jain, Apoorva Jain and Sidhant Kaushik appeared for IOA. Senior Advocates Dayan Krishnan, Sudhir Nandrajog and Jayant Mehta along with advocates Chetan Anand, Akash Srivastava, Premtosh Mishra, Yojna Goyal, Rytim Vohra, Aditya Vikram Sing, Kushagra Sinha, Vanshdeep Dalmia, Suchakshu Jain, Vishnu Sharma, Anupama Sharma, Binay Kumar, Akshay Ringe, Kartikeya Rastogi, Megha Mukerjee, Pathak Rakesh Kaushik, Abhay Raj Varma, Priyanka Ghosh, Vidhi Jain, Anuj Tyagi, Ankur Chawla, Maitry Kakade and Pranav Sapra appeared for other respondents and applicants. .[Read Judgment]