Clean Sports India, a movement for corruption-free sports in the country, has accused Sports Secretary P K Deb of being "hand in glove" with "tainted" sports administrators like Lalit Bhanot, a charge which the senior bureaucrat has strongly refuted.
The CSI said that the Sports Secretary worked with the suspended IOA led by Abhey Singh Chautala to include Hockey India General Secretary Narinder Batra and Jharkhand Olympic Association President R K Anand in the IOA delegation for tomorrow's meeting with the International Olympic Committee.
Batra and Anand were elected as the vice-presidents in the IOA elections held a day after the IOC banned India on December 4 last for conducting the polls under the Sports Ministry's controversial Sports Code.
"Clean Sports India was not surprised at all when news broke out about Sports Secretary P K Deb's collusion with Lalit Bhanot. We were aware of his lenient approach with tainted officials. He even met Chautala several times in recent times," CSI convener BVP Rao alleged in a statement.
"He wanted Narender Batra in the delegation. In fact, it is at our and some others initiative that Abhinav Bindra was included by the Minister. Otherwise Secretary had no intention of taking any sportsperson like Abhinav," he claimed.
Deb, who is currently in Lausanne for the meeting, said he had not heard anything more absurd.
"I have never heard of anything so absurd. All I am trying to do is to get the sports code implemented and get India back to the Olympics", Deb told PTI.
