Ministry lacks support from IOA on Sports policy: Aiyar

Dec 22:  The rift between Sports Ministry and Indian Olympic Association (IOA) regarding the endorsement of proposed Sports Policy is broadening up day by day with the verbal duels are taking the center stage while the real issue stands same where it was few months back.

The Union Sports Minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar clearly stated his stance on Friday, while attending the prize distribution function of the NIIT Mind Champions Masters event, that the lack of cooperation from the IOA side towards the comprehensive draft sports policy is what that has been delaying the policy’s approval from the cabinet.

He mentioned that IOA didn’t have time to attend three meetings thus far to discuss the subject. Aiyar also said the ministry has revised the draft after taking into consideration the inputs from various people connected with sports in the country.

“We gave IOA the meeting dates on three occasions and every time they backed out at the eleventh hour saying that it was inconvenient for them,” Aiyar said.

“All they did thereafter was to publicly make abusive comments about me and my ministry,” Aiyar added.

“We are already late by four months and we cannot be waiting for ever. We plan to put the policy before the cabinet in January,” Aiyar revealed.

The policy had been revised considerably as “Brigadier K.P. Singh Deo of IOA wrote me a detailed letter on this issue and we included some inputs from it in the policy,” claimed Aiyar.

Aiyar also said that if only the IOA had cooperated on time we could have drafted policy by the end of September.