A day after the proposed National Sports Development Bill was rejected by the Union cabinet, the consensus among politicians was that the proposed legislation was dead.
Although sports minister Ajay Maken was officially directed to redraft the Bill and excise elements in it that might suggest the government was trying to control sport in India, sources close to him say it will be very hard to make sports federations more accountable. Maken himself said he was confident he’d get the cabinet's approval the next time.
At the heart of the controversy is the Rs 40,000-crore Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Five ministers, directly or indirectly involved in BCCI politics, are opposed to the Bill – Sharad Pawar, Farooq Abdullah, C P Joshi, Vilasrao Deshmukh and Rajeev Shukla. The first four are all cabinet ministers and sought to block the bill. Maken’s only supporter in the Cabinet was home minister P Chidambaram, who said it tried to bring accountability in sport but also counselled that a ‘good Bill’ could be tweaked and re-presented in the cabinet.
Maken’s supporters also said the Bill had the support of the party high command— that is, Congress president Sonia Gandhi — and of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Maken said the proposed Bill was intended to make sports bodies more transparent and efficient and was in no way an attempt to take control of these national sports federations. “There are just three elements in the bill. One, as they use government grounds for matches and practice, they should be accountable and submit to Right to Information (RTI) laws. Two, that those who are 70-plus should not hold office. Three, that they should submit to anti-doping tests when required. How can this level of scrutiny construe control?” asked a Maken supporter.
Maken himself clarified: “We don't intend to have our own representatives in any way in any of the managements of these sports bodies. We don't want to direct them, whether they would like to take Ajay Maken as one of their members or some of the other MPs or ministers.” Adding: “We just want transparency and efficiency in their functioning. Since they are sending teams outside India representing the country, they should be answerable to all Indians through RTI.
Their accounts should be known to the public through RTI; after all, they are using government funds and sending teams, so we want them to be accountable to the citizens of India through RTI.”
Maken said, for example, people would like to know how much BCCI paid to get land for the Ferozeshah Kotla Stadium in Delhi or the ground at Dharamsala.
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BCCI has said in court that its cricket team is not just an ‘Indian’ cricket team, but the best team in the world. BCCI is also dismissive of the moves the government has made in the games that it has some lien on. For instance, in hockey, because the government could not resolve the fight between the two sets of hockery federations last year, a private initiative had to be taken to finance the team’s visit abroad to play matches. “We went to industrialists, cap in hand, to collect money for the training of hockey team players. That’s the government for you,” said one of those who took the initiative.
The sports ministry, on the other hand, says all other sports bodies in India are riding piggyback on the powerful cricket lobbies that represent such deep-seated, vested interests that they are resisting efforts to change.