AIFF elects a player

THE election of former footballer Kalyan Chaubey as president of the All India Football Federation (AIFF) brings the curtain down on a sorry saga that brought to relief all that’s wrong with the sport in the country. The story had a politician who had to be removed from the president’s post by the Supreme Court (SC); it involved a Committee of Administrators (CoA) that seemed to exceed its brief in running AIFF and preparing a draft constitution for it; it also had football’s world governing body FIFA — an organisation frequently rocked by corruption scandals — which put a ban on AIFF and made the Indian Government and the SC act as per its will; the politicians and the courts, worried that the ‘honour’ of India would suffer if FIFA took away India’s hosting rights for the Under-17 Women’s World Cup, swiftly withdrew the mandate of the CoA, which had been formed by the SC.

Chaubey’s election, with a 33-1 win over former India captain Bhaichung Bhutia, was not without controversy. Congress leader Manvendra Singh — son of former BJP stalwart Jaswant Singh — said Union minister Kiren Rijiju ‘influenced’ the election process. Bhutia’s nomination was proposed by Andhra Pradesh and seconded by Rajasthan, but he did not get the support of his home state, Sikkim, and he alleged it was so because of ‘meddling’ by the ruling Sikkim Krantikari Morcha. Chaubey is a BJP politician, having contested the 2019 parliamentary election. The new vice-president is Karnataka Legislative Assembly member and Congress leader NA Haris, who defeated Manvendra. Bhutia had been part of the Trinamool Congress before he launched the Hamro Sikkim Party. In other words, after long-time president Praful Patel — a Nationalist Congress Party leader — was removed by the SC, politics and Indian football remain deeply intertwined.

Indian football has been languishing in the lower echelons of the global sport for decades and there is no realistic hope of the national team becoming even a continental power in the coming decades. The prospect of political interference in AIFF’s affairs is also dead. The silver lining is that Chaubey is AIFF’s first player-president and knows what it takes to become a sportsperson in India — he just might initiate steps to cultivate the sport at the grassroots level, a dire need for football to blossom in the country.