HI hopeful of resolving de-recognition threat

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Hockey India has been asked to explain its position with regard to several issues at an Executive Board meeting of the International Hockey Federation (FIH) in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Saturday.

Faced with a de-recognition notice from the FIH over its association with the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF), HI is ready to forget its uneasy, short-lived alliance with the IHF and move on as an independent entity administering hockey in the country.

“We cannot go with the IHF from now on,” said HI Secretary-General Narinder Batra on Thursday as he got ready to leave for Lausanne to face the FIH Executive.

Batra said he was hopeful of sorting things out at the Lausanne meeting. However, he was quick to point out that India’s chances of hosting the Olympic qualifiers here in February next would be decided only after the FIH decided on the de-recognition issue.

Batra said he would make all efforts to ensure that the qualifiers were held in India once the de-recognition issue was settled. He said a host city contract was signed and sent to the FIH a few days ago fulfilling the conditions for hosting the qualifiers.

He said the FIH had issued the de-recognition notice to HI following the agreement HI had reached with the IHF last July at the initiative of the Union Sports Ministry.

Since then the truce had broken down and the rival bodies have stuck to the stand that each other needed to make concessions in order to go forward towards the formation of a unified body.

Batra said the FIH had its main objection to HI’s association with IHF, a body de-recognised by the FIH some years ago. Apart from that the international federation also objected to India hosting an unsanctioned event in WSH, a project got up by the IHF.

The FIH had argued, according to Batra, that recognition of a body within a country was its responsibility and HI had no business to resurrect a body that had been de-recognised by the international federation.

It was also peeved that this was done at a time when the IHF had filed a petition with the FIH Judicial Commission against its de-recognition.

The FIH had moved the Champions Trophy out of India and had threatened to take out the Olympic qualifiers also in case the administrative structure in the country was not straightened out soon.

Batra said according to his information no further headway had been made in the discussions the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) had on the hockey issue. The IHF was to have submitted a fresh proposal to the IOA by November 3 and that too had apparently not materialised, he said.