Merger, accounts to surface at IHF meet

Bangalore, April 15:

FTER more than two years of being more autocratic and less developmental, the Indian Hockey Federation has called for an Executive Committee meeting in the city on Monday. The EC meeting was last held on the final day of the 59th National Championship in Hyderabad in March 1999. Incidentally, that meeting was held close to a year after the EC took over in May 1998. That makes the Bangalore meeting only the second EC meet the present set of IHF office-bearers have called in the last three years!

The main programme on the agenda for Monday’s meeting is the ratification of the proposal to merge IHF and the Indian Women’s Hockey Federation to form the Indian Hockey Confederation. But questions have already been raised by a former president about the validity of any such ratification.
It is said in IHF circles that the National federation, after dilly-dallying for more than two years, is ‘‘rushing through the merger’’, with April 21 the last date to submit it to the FIH Congress.

What is also pointed out is that any such merger can be done only by an amendment to the IHF Constitution, which has to be passed only at a Special Generalbody Meeting. It’s a different story altogether that even the Annual Generalbody Meetings have not been called ever since KPS Gill (president), K Jothikumaran (Secretary-General) and JN Tyagi (Treasurer) took over in May 1998.

It is also learnt that two vice-presidents of the IHF have already raised objections to the ad-hoc manner in which the office-bearers functioned.
Also on the agenda will be the passing of accounts for three years. The office-bearers are yet to circulate the accounts and the balance sheet to the members, thus giving no time for them to go through the accounts. ‘‘Nobody even knows how much money came into the IHF. All that we get to hear is only from Gill’s statements in the press about the various amounts for sponsorships, rights fee from Doordarshan,’’ an official lamented.