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.
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