Sonowal review: Two years at top, but nothing to write home about

Sabi Hussain

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 24

With less than three months to go for the Rio Olympics, India have a new Sports Minister in Jitendra Singh, the MOS in the Prime Minister’s Office, who has been given an independent charge of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.

Reason? The incumbent, Sarbananda Sonowal, is going to be the new Chief Minister of Assam. The 54-year-old Sonowal has been rewarded by the central leadership for scripting BJP’s sweeping win in the northeastern state.

Sonowal delivered for BJP by winning a historic mandate in Assam. But did he also deliver as the sports minister during his two-year innings? Did he live up to the expectations of the sportspersons and coaches? Did he resolve the long-standing problems plaguing the sports federations?

Well, the answer has to be a big no. His term was marked by no significant event or change. Sonowal’s deep love and passion for football, cricket and badminton got him the job of the sports minister. But, sadly, his sporting background did not help because his priority — right since the time he joined the BJP five years back — was to govern his home state.

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Northeast’s sports minister

Sonowal was always “Northeast’s sports minister”. Soon after assuming the charge, he pushed for a National Sports University, to be set-up in Manipur. In the 2015-16 union budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley provided a corpus of Rs 200 crore to establish the university, the work on which has just started. Sonowal also took the South Asian Games (SAG) to Guwahati and Shillong. The SAG, in hindsight, seems designed to promote Sonowal as the CM candidate and strengthen the BJP’s mass base by targeting the youth. However, the multi-sport event was not without its share of organisational hiccups.

There were complaints from the participating teams of not being provided proper facilities, the biggest of them being the lack of Games Village. Then, a group of officials from Nepal had to spend a night in the function hall of a hotel, which was converted into a dormitory. Even the Indian women athletes, including 100m and 400m runners, had been put up in a local school campus, which was 20km away from their competition venue. Another goof-up was the last-minute change in the football venue, the Nehru Stadium, because the playing turf was not ready. These problems occurred despite the Games taking place in Sonowal’s home state.

Ministry operating from Guwahati

Sonowal liked to spend his time in Assam, to do the groundwork for his elevation as the CM. He travelled to Guwahati to campaign for the assembly elections with increasing frequency as the elections neared. Solving the problems of the athletes or resolving the politics in sports federations did not seem high on his priority list. “He would stay put in Assam for a major part of the year and would only return to the capital when the Parliament was in session or there were some important Ministry functions to attend,” an official, who did not wish to be named, reflected on his term.

Sonowal’s occupancy of his Shastri Bhawan office saw a sharp decline when he was named the CM candidate last November. “Most of the time, Sports Secretary Rajeev Yadav would clear the files on his own while SAI DG Injeti Srinivas would directly deal with the federations. During the crucial phase of his campaigning, Sonowal had directed the two officials to take complete charge of the Ministry. They would call him up in Guwahati to discuss matters only if they were urgent,” the official added.

Boxing, AITA and judo tussle unresolved

India does not have a proper boxing federation in place since December 2012, and the one which did come up for a brief period under the aegis of Boxing India (BI) was never allowed to function in peace by the power-hungry administrators of Indian boxing. Since September 2015, India has had no boxing federation and an AIBA-appointed ad-hoc committee is running the show. Sonowal could not or did not care to work on ensuring that a proper Indian boxing federation was in place. The mess in the boxing administration is reflected in the fact that only one Indian boxer has qualified for this year’s Olympics. The boxers had little support for their training-cum-competition programme in the lead up to the Olympics. Eight boxers had qualified for the 2012 London Games.

Similarly, Sonowal was unable to resolve the problems in the All India Tennis Federation (AITA) and the Judo Federation of India (JFI), whose bosses are the prime violators of the government’s Sports Code. AITA’s Anil Khanna and JFI’s Mukesh Kumar have been ruling the federations since ages, without serving the cooling-off period stipulated by the Sports Code. 

However, the Sports Ministry has not ensured that the tenure guideline for the president’s post are implemented by them. Then, there are Basketball Federation of India (BFI) and Gymnastics Federation of India (GFI) which have two factions, but Sonowal could not resolve these conflicts.

No Sports Code, Fraud Bill

Former Sports Minister Ajay Maken had made serious efforts to introduce the National Sports Development Bill (NSDB) in the Parliament, in order to bring the Indian cricket board (BCCI) under the purview of the RTI Act, and to implement age and tenure guideline. But after Maken left the scene, neither Jitendra Singh, who was the Sports Minister in UPA-II, nor Sonowal made any serious efforts to revive that bill. Because of the Ministry’s own lackadaisical approach, BCCI never took the government’s threat seriously.

How much was the government serious about the Sports Code could be gauged from the fact that octogenarian VK Malhotra was appointed the chairman of the All India Council of Sports (AICS) in complete violation of the Sports Code.

Then, the sports fraud bill is pending with the Sports Ministry despite the Law Ministry having approved it.

TOPS failure

The Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) was launched with an aim to identify medal hopefuls and help them prepare for the Rio Olympics. But the scheme got stuck in multi-layered clearances, never-ending paperwork and inordinate delays in the release of funds. The scheme created more problems for athletes, rather than simplifying and aiding their preparation for the Games. Their proposals for training abroad and equipment purchase frequently got stuck in the Ministry’s corridors, leading to voices of dissent. It was only after the media highlighted the plights of the athletes that Sonowal swung into action and decided to make 90 per cent of the earmarked TOPS funding available to athletes “without any paperwork”.