The President of the National Olympic Committee Suresh Subramaniam has warned of international sanctions following Sports Ministry directives to introduce term limits to individuals holding office at sports bodies. Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe in a gazzette notification last week said that a President of a Sports body will be ineligible to get re-elected if he had served two terms in office while any other individual who had been holding office continuously for eight years also will be knocked out from contesting the elections.
Subramaniam warned of consequences if sports bodies are facing political interference. “It is detrimental when the Sports Ministry interferes with national federations. Simply because there are allegations against one or two sports bodies, you can not curtail all national administrations’ functioning.”
“I reiterate that sports bodies need to be independent. However, action must be taken against individuals who have done wrong. The International Olympic Committee Charter is very clear about sports moving forward without political interference. IOC has been telling us to amend our Sports Law. It’s anarchic. We have not done that for ages. While we are on borrowed time for not upgrading Sports Law, we will get into trouble if we only bring in regulations instead of upgrading the Sports Law.
“The bigger picture is the Sports Law that needs to be amended. Some of the regulations that are being introduced are contradicting the Sports Law.
“I believe due to the huge money that is involved in cricket, every time new regulations are introduced to rectify problems in cricket. Because of one sport all other sports suffer.”
“Instead of taking action against individuals of one or two sports bodies, curtailing the freedom of all sports bodies does not augur well moving forward. Most of the sports administrators in our country are doing a voluntary job.
“If the IOC gets involved and sanctions us, we will not be able to take part in international events and there will be no funding which will be a huge blow for sports bodies that are struggling to meet ends. We do not want such a scenario happening,” warned Subramaniam, who had been a sports administrator for over 25 years after a successful career as a tennis player.