Will peace last long in ad hoc committee?

By Sandeep Narayan in New Delhi

THE good news is that India’s senior hockey team is back to winning matches. The bad news is that the ‘ emergency’ meeting called by the Indian Olympic Association’s ad hoc committee revealed the underbelly of hockey administration.

This meeting may have, for the while, solved the infighting that plagued the ad hoc committee in the past couple of weeks. Now the question is how long the peace will last? The IOA president and ad hoc committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi claims that there is no rift in the panel from which Randhir Singh resigned last week citing lack of transparency and accountability within the members.

“ There is no rift in the ad hoc committee. Since I was handling the committee, Randhir decided to handle other things,” Kalmadi replied when quizzed about the situation.

It was clear that the committee was going to down play the issue but the fact is the rift occurred and had the chairman not intervened on Tuesday, there was a high chance of many selectors also quitting.

The IOA secretary general Randhir stepped down last week after expressing unhappiness with the committee’s functioning. On Tuesday Randhir agreed that there were differences between committee members but said they had been solved and now hockey is their priority.

“ We had a meeting of the committee and the selectors today and certain issues were raised by both sides. My resignation still stands but the committee is part and parcel of IOA, and being an IOA official I am still associated with the committee,” Randhir said.

He aslo said the committee has decided to send a selector with the national team on overseas tours to make onfield assessments of players.

“ From now onwards, a selector will accompany the national team on foreign tours.” Sources claim that this was the main agenda, adding that the meeting convener, Mohammad Aslam, was in the firing line. In his defense, Aslam said he had no problems with any member and though many are maligning his image he will still not like to comment anything.

“ We are winning. I thought that getting results was the main thing and that is what is happening. I have no guilty conscience,” Aslam said.

Randhir also announced that the ad hoc committee has decided to conduct the senior hockey nationals in Pune from March 2 to March 15.

He also informed that three more members were added to the technical wing of the committee to provide momentum to their activity.

“ The committee also decided to add three more members in the technical committee in Aslam Sher Khan, Ashok Kumar and Dhanraj Pillay,” he said.