 Hello and let's talk about the elections to the Boxing Federation of India or rather the elections that were supposed to be held on December 18th but were postponed. Now these elections were originally supposed to be held on September but they were moved because of COVID-19 pandemic and yet again they have been postponed after the state associations apparently wrote saying that due to the threat of COVID-19 and the fact that many of those who were supposed to vote at about the age of 60 it would be advisable to postpone the elections. Now this is raised quite a bit of controversy with some sections protesting the move of course and this actually raises larger questions about democracy in Indian sport itself. Just a few weeks ago we had seen the case of the All India Football Federation where associations had written demanding an early election and there are a number of associations where such tussles continue not only about elections but about democracy within these sporting bodies itself and this also has grave implications on the future of sport in the country, on the development of talent, on the preparation of players so that they can compete at an international level. We talked in news clicks Leslie Xavier on some of these issues and the future of sport in India. Thank you Leslie for joining us. So a couple of weeks ago we talked about the controversy, the debate over elections to the All India Football Federation. At that point state associations were writing saying that the elections should be held and recently we had the phenomenon of the Boxing Federation of India elections being postponed after state association said they should not be held and of course the reason cited is COVID so which is understandable at the same time a bit strange at this point of time. So could you maybe take us through what exactly is happening in with the BFI right now? Tourist brochures say that I guess that India is a country of glorious contrast and very heartening to see as a writer reader with a writer reader perspective that our sports administrators have gotten into this habit of writing letters for what purpose that is that is where the shady business starts. So in football like you mentioned they have the state associations and an overwhelming majority of almost 25 state associations wrote to the AFF All India Football Federation saying that they should take a decision on conducting the elections, the date or whatever in the in the AGM that is coming up on 21st of this month. Boxing is exactly the opposite and we don't know how many number of state associations are involved but the current president of Boxing Federation of India Ajay Srin who is the owner of SpiceJet he has in their communication he has mentioned that a majority of state associations have written to me asking that it is difficult for them to travel to whichever the place the elections are held because most of them are old people the I mean and travelling under COVID-19 circumstances are difficult so they should postpone the elections to a date a better date where things have settled as far as the pandemic is concerned. So the interesting bit here is that this postponement of elections in as far as Boxing is concerned there is a second faction that has come up which is challenging the current president and that is led by of course we know that in Indian sport politics intermingles with I mean politics is politicians are larger present at the administrative level than former sports person so in this case the faction is led by Ashish Shaila BJP leader from Maharashtra who is a former Maharashtra sports minister himself and apparently the current secretary of Boxing Federation of India Jay Kohli is also supporting Shaila and adjusting it is evident from the where the state associations have responded he has a backing from some most of the state associations as such and there is a power struggle happening where the other faction wants the election to be held in the AGM which is on the 18th Boxing the AGM was supposed to be staged on the 18th now using these letters approach the returning officer just is Rajesh Chandan and requested him to look at this matter and postpone it because considering the circumstances and he has newly done that and the Indian Olympic Association has also agreed with the decision so now we know how the power dynamics are so IOS supports adjusting the incumbent president and the other faction which possibly as the because he let's just be very clear adjusting also is a friend of the BJP and the other side has BJP politicians involved so now the tricky question is who has the larger cloud in the party dynamics for things to things to fall in place in their favor so adjusting was quoted in different interviews that is open to elections he wants the elections to happen and let the associations or the representatives from the state decide what is perfect for the for boxing to take it take Indian boxing forward so to speak but the game year one can understand because we are talking about elections in a country where general elections have been in that sense legislative assembly elections have been held recently we are election and you know the amount of people that are involved in this electoral processes now last week Kerala local body elections happened again a huge multi-stage elections as such and now we are talking about at the most a convention of hundred representatives which would be held in a highly sanitized secure environment like a five-star hotel or whatever and they would all be traveling in in in the safe confines of airlines or maybe as I say himself can use his headline for that matter so just just don't understand this idea that we are afraid of COVID-19 let's not conduct elections at all because and again as far as Indian sport administration is concerned athletic federation had its election last month and this month apparently few more federations they are in their supposed to conduct elections as well as a GM so this process is happening and you can't just shut a democratic process within the sports community citing pandemic when on the other side all the other activities are being pushed for assumption and other activities that involve larger larger crowd larger gathering larger logistical processes I'll talk about football because football the Indian super league is being conducted in a co bubble where a lot of players are involved 11 teams support staff everybody's involved no problem in conducting that but you can't get under the people to conduct conductive federation GM and election so that is the dichotomy if you if you ask me and just just don't understand this logic at all and however this I mean it's it's very clear sports administration or sports federations and sports associations are the least I mean the studies have proven that also university studies research papers are there are the least democratic of all institutions if you look at the last 20 years and 21st century where democracy became the predominant way of how things are run right so this context just wanted to push about what do you call it a little bit further into the last point you mentioned which is in terms of democracy and sports institutions so of course globally we've heard a lot of these stories of influence peddling corruption and there are a lot of stories that come out during around the Olympics for instance around that time but how has India's record generally been in this because we do see that there is a general tendency for of course understandable some ways but for sports administrators to try to stay on and power as long as possible there isn't there seems to be no real or is there a real process which uniformly regulates all these associations in terms of how the democratic function should be this elections if you look at it I mean in the Indian context they've always been infighting within the federation within the association and if you I mean a couple of weeks back in fact in the last two three discussions we have brought out this point that earlier because of a PIL from a sports lawyer Rahul Mehra in the Delhi High Court, Delhi High Court had directed the sports ministry to take the recognition away of 56 national sports federation because they don't comply with the national sports code now when the national sports code was instituted it was with the aim that administrative the structure can be all the corruption and all the politics that happen within that system can be can be negated as much as possible so it stipulates among among many things tenure for the people at the helm so they can't they can't sit as president for more than three terms which is 12 years max and there is a cooling off period after that there is a age gap there is I mean so a lot of rules and it's it's largely a political issue on the outside but the but the point is that none of the federations have implemented or incorporated those directives into the into their constitution so this is almost 10 years now since the national sports code was was pushed forth towards these federations but none I mean very few I mean handful of them have I mean accepted some some parts of it not not even fully that way by most of them are not keen and keen to implement at all and it all I mean it's all it all shows about the people at the helm and how they want to catch catch hold of the chair and remain in that chair and if you look at boxing federation for instance after 2013-14 there was a huge power struggle within the federation and Indian boxing federation had lost its recognition with the with the global body a b a is the global body and then once the elections happened and things were ironed out here then recognition came back again and that critical period if you look at if you correlate it with the performance of our boxes at the international arena it dipped because we are talking about Indian boxers getting medals at the Olympics first Vigendra Singh in 2008 and 2012 Mary Kong followed that with the medal plus many of them being there or thereabouts in the medal bracket and world championship of course they were winning medals and then suddenly once corresponding to I mean in in correlation with the happenings at the federation and the fights happening at the federation the performance tip the next Olympic games in Brazil we had zero medals and most of the of our boxes failed to go progress beyond the initial rounds so so that is the impact that is there directly if you look at the problems that happens within the other politics that happened within the federation because once the global body regardless of whatever the alignment is once the global body realizes that there is a problem within the national federation they would take away that recognition so that the things are things are ironed out here so if you look at I mean actually federation doesn't have a recognition with the global body the karate federation it has a huge problem there like I think three factions which are which are fighting for power and of course the current ruling in this game of power and chairs and chess or whatever it can be called called the Indian Olympic Association is also a player because it's not directly between the global federation and the national federation of a particular sport but there is this the representatives of this national federation as a stake in Indian Olympic Association elections as well so that it's actually a cesspool where political leanings and power dynamics and electoral ideas and all everything comes into play and globally I mean though everybody claims that we iron out stuff we keep everything but if you look at the global body of many sport there have been officials who have been at the helm and controlling things with the iron fist without without leaving the chair many of them and so Indian Olympic International Olympic Committee tries to intervene it's not like IOC itself is this scheme but they try to intervene and get things in order so globally if you look at global body elections there have been few elections that have happened for instance in rugby union elections happened and interestingly some of the national Olympic associations they wanted to conduct elections some was agreed by the international committee others were asked not to do elections and the means of elections was online so South African Association for instance was asked to not to conduct elections because the IOC fees the South Africa is so corrupt that elections won't be in an unbiased way so these are the I mean it's I mean you probably can understand the depth of mess in it by the way I am having trouble articulating because I am jumping from one point to another so it's a pretty murky situation as far as this power dynamics and politics in international sport or the national sport is concerned it's very clear though at the national at our national federation level when things happen bad it directly affects the players right till the grassroots absolutely and the grassroots points is also very key because I guess when in fighting peaks when there is no certainty about administration there is no real attention paid to grassroots development programs and no systematic attempt that is made over the years to build up talent which can actually peak in events like the Olympics or the Asian Games or the government games yeah so what happens is when these alignments happen and when there's lack of elections for instance and so that trickles down to to the governing bodies at the district level or the sub district level the basic unit from where representatives come to the state then state representatives come to the national so it's it's it's a cascading effect and last discussion itself a couple of discussions back I had spoken about how high suffered while being a wrestler and caught in the crossfire between two warring factions in the state association in Kerala so the same similar thing is happening there though and it's directly linked to the national sports court so this is I mean this is I am part of a a WhatsApp group of former wrestlers in Kerala and officials and coaches so there is a power struggle happening there where the incumbent president who is also the secretary general of the wrestling federation of India vn plus who this is his name so he will complete two years so as per national sports court he has to step down as the president of Kerala state association but I am of the understanding that he is not very keen so last time a cooling off period was required if I remember it right he had gotten one of his representatives to become the secretary of the Kerala association so that's how these things work in Kabaddi federation which is again in a mess now and that again I'll tell you Asian Games 2018 we lost we didn't won win gold in both the men's and women's segment and it coincided with the power struggle in the in the Kabaddi federation so it's so initiating programs at the grassroots or initiating programs for players and so all these things can only happen if if the structure is in place without any power struggle happening within the system so if if for instance a state association and this is a reality of course I am stating it without presenting proofs of the situation but I have experienced it myself at the personal level so if a state association is ruled by a faction which didn't vote for the ruling faction in the national federation then yeah god help them because things will always be biased so that's just a simple example so holding the elections is very key to this yeah of course uh adhering to the national sports code is important and that's what Raul Mehra again has filed a PIL last week saying that uh the the court should hold I mean stay whatever the elections that is going to be held in the next few months till these federations who are taking the elections who are conducting the elections have a constitution which follows the national sports code but that would create a huge mess which Mehra whatever the goodness in his intentions he doesn't realize that it it drastically affects the players as well so holding the elections democracy is I mean the the practice of democracy at least whatever the semblance of democracy that is there in Indian sport is is paramount of course the new federation the court can direct them to implement the sports code at a later stage but getting an elective elected body in place is important for running of the sport in the country as well as to maintain that bridge with the international federation because if if a body is run by an ad hoc committee then that recognition goes then the then it then it creates travel on two prongs so what is the solution to this frankly it's very difficult to understand how to go about it but but the simple step would be to I mean see democracy at play within these federation that's that's that's all we can hope for even if it's a very messy democracy thank you so much Leslie for talking to us that's all we have time for today we'll be back tomorrow with 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