New IOA head Usha ducks tough questions

Vinayak Padmadeo

New Delhi, December 10

PT Usha took over as the new Indian Olympic Association (IOA) president today. The four-time Asian Games gold medal winner is the first woman to head IOA.

The election of Usha and several other candidates from her panel — including senior vice-president Ajay H Patel, vice-president Gagan Narang, joint secretary Kalyan Chaubey and treasurer Sahdev Yadav — was a formality as there were no other nominations.

After Returning Officer Umesh Sinha handed Usha the election certificate, she had to face tough questions about the manner in which election was conducted.

“I am very happy today as there are many sportspersons in the executive committee,” Usha said. “I have lived 13 years of my life without sports. After that I have been involved in sports as an athlete, as a coach and an administrator. I never thought that one day I would become the IOA chief or a Member of Parliament. It is all because of sports.”

“Me and my team with collective effort will do our best for the betterment of sports,” she added, and left Chaubey to confront the tough questions.

Her first official day at work started with controversy when questions were raised during the Annual General Meeting (AGM) before the voting. The netball association’s Suman Kaushik, who was in the contest for the joint secretary’s post, questioned how Sportspersons of Merits (SOMs) were included in the voting list and were allowed to contest before the IOA general assembly ratified them as members with voting rights. A few members questioned why a singular voting ballot was not being used to elect four executive council members. However, the objections were disregarded by Sinha.

Asked about the objections, Chaubey said they were not in a position to comment.

“This answer should be given by the Returning Officer since the election has been conducted under his purview as per the order of Supreme Court. We are not in a position to comment but definitely your concern is also our concern,” Chaubey said.

He also dismissed the allegation of 32 withdrawals during the Athlete Commission election as an excuse put forward by the losing candidates. “You see, an election has been conducted under the supervision of the Supreme Court and an RO has been appointed. If that election has been conducted democratically, how can anyone say it was not fairplay? There are two teams in any competition and one will lose. The team that loses will always come with excuses. The winning team cannot keep addressing those excuses,” he said.

Team Usha wins

All candidates of the Usha panel won. Alaknanda Ashok beat Suman for the post of the female joint secretary, while Rohit Rajpal, Lt Gen Harpal Singh, Amitabh Sharma and Bhupinder Singh Bajwa easily won the vote to become new executive members. Yogeshwar Dutt and Dola Banerjee had already been elected unopposed on the SOM quota.