Pargat blasts Hockey India for affiliation muddle

NEW DELHI: Pargat Singh, former hockey captain and secretary of Hockey Punjab, on Wednesday cried foul over the way the ad-hoc body of Hockey India is handling the affiliation issue.

Pargat told reporters here that there was no serious attempt to go for the elections of HI even almost two years after dissolution of the KPS Gill-led Indian Hockey Federation.

“It’s shocking to see the way the affiliations are given. In December, they affiliated the Maharashtra Hockey Association with Victor Ellis as president and Ikram Khan as general secretary. Subsequently, it was affiliated by the Maharashtra Olympic Association (MOA),” he said.

“But in January, MOA cancelled the affiliation on the ground that it was misled on the issue by Bombay Hockey Association’s Kehar Singh on the basis of false documents. Shockingly, on April 20, Hockey India’s secretary general Narinder Batra in a letter named Kehar Singh along with two others as the representatives of Maharastra hockey. I can’t understand what’s going on.”

Former secretary of Indian Women’s Federation, Amrit Bose claimed that such moves were aimed to suit the interest of a quarter. “They want to have their men in Hockey India so that when the IOA elections take place they can get all the three votes from HI in favour of a particular section,” Bose claimed.

Pargat added: “At a time when the IOA is talking about autonomy, it is using flouting democratic norms to suit its own interest. They are twisting the term to their own advantage.”

Bose said that some units have written a letter to the sports ministry urging it to ensure that HI elections were held in time.

The International Hockey Federation has set a deadline of May 31 to hold the elections in the country. “We have no information about the elections. Nobody has said anything about it to us. But the murmurs suggest that it could be held in June,” Amrit Bose said.