A week from now, the Indian Golf Union (IGU) will resume its annual general body meeting that it left unfinished on December 15, 2018 after a District Court in Kolkata granted a stay on the meeting in response to a prayer by an aggrieved West Bengal Golf Society since it had not received the notice for the annual general meeting.
Later, the trial judge ruled that the notice for the annual general meeting was itself illegal, leaving IGU with no option but to appeal to the High Court at Calcutta. On February 19 this year, Justice Soumen Sen ruled that restraining the Indian Golf Union from conducting its AGM and approving its accounts was simply too drastic an interruption and set the trial judge’s order aside.
Armed with the High Court order, on March 9, 2020, IGU called for the resumption of the meeting in a fortnight but deferred it in view of the members’ concern about travelling to Delhi owing to the outbreak of the Corona Virus. On October 30, IGU sent notice to State Golf Associations that the interrupted AGM would eventually resume on November 22, 2020.
IGU members will Lt. Gen. D Anbu and Lt. Gen. Asit Mistry, due to be elected unopposed as President and Secretary-General respectively, have changed roles. Lt. Gen. Anbu retired as Vice Chief of Army Staff on August 31, 2019 while Lt. Gen. Mistry moved as Commandant of the National Defence Academy, Khadvasla. The latter headed the Madhya Prant Golf Association.
It remains to be seen if Lt. Gen. Mistry, who heads an institution that some call the cradle of Indian defence forces, will be able to spare time to act as the chief executive of the Indian Golf Union. It is a moot question why some Army officials want to get into positions of power in and management of National Sports Federations when they are in active service.
With no new agenda items being taken up as this is only a resumption of the December 2018 meeting, questions are being asked how the IGU can say that the term of office-bearers elected till 2022. The answer may lie in the IGU Memorandum of Association which states that the term of office of the office-bearers shall not be more than two years from the date of assumption of office.
There are more pertinent questions that have to be asked.
It is a fact that a candidate has passed and is likely to be declared elected when the election process for that post must start from scratch. The death of CSR Reddy (Chandigarh Golf) on September 17, 2019, should have made the IGU think in terms of countermanding the election for the Governing Council.
It is also a fact that the present Secretary-General, who is vying for a place in the Governing Council, has crossed 70 years of age and will be ineligible to hold an office-bearer’s post as per the election guidelines of the National Sports Code.
Besides, Services Sports Control Board Secretary Lt. Gen. Harpal Singh, who ran for Rowing Federation of India President’s post, is listed a candidate as member of the Governing Council. The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports may ponder if this is a violation of the Code which specifies that an official can be in more than one National Sports Federation.
More than anything else, it will be important for anyone keen to ensure to that the elections are conducted as per acceptable norms, legal and ethical, to check if the State Associations – and, truth to tell, not all of the 28 organisations listed in the electoral college are State bodies – have held their annual meetings and elections in the past two years.
It will be a good wager that most will not have much to show and will proffer the stalled annual general meeting of the IGU as the reason. However, that argument can be waved aside since the Kolkata court proceedings concerned IGU and not the State Associations. There was nothing to stop them from carrying out their legal and moral duties while IGU was sorting things out.
The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports as well as the Indian Olympic Association must ask the IGU to share membership details of each of these 28 organisations to verify if there are ‘State Associations’ in the truest sense of the term. It will be no surprise if some of these come as nothing more than organisations that exist on paper to help IGU achieve transition.
Nearly a third of the ‘State Associations’ listed on the 2018 electoral roll have their addresses in military stations. Besides, one calls itself a Golf Promoters Society and another is a Golf Course Owners Association. Clearly, this is an attempt to show compliance with the National Sports Code, but it is only a childish bid to pull the wool over the eyes of those watching IGU.
The Indian Olympic Association must be mindful of whether the organisations listed in the IGU electoral college are all affiliated with the State Olympic Committee before even considering granting recognition to the Indian Golf Union. The Ministry may like to check with State Governments if these ‘State Associations’ have not been floated only to ‘conform’ with the Code.
Any statutory body investigating the IGU electoral college may also open a Pandora’s Box when it comes to some State Golf Associations being summarily replaced in the span of a year, without following any procedure for recognising new units in some States. Murmurs that some officials of the Army, eager to retain control over IGU, have been behind such ill-advised decisions.
The Indian Golf Union can be expected to go ahead with its process, but the responses of the Ministry of the Youth Affairs and Sports and the Indian Olympic Association will be watched with more than cursory interest. It would appear as if IGU is challenging them both to show that their intention of promoting good governance will be backed by the right action.
A time of test to see what happens.