HC stays election for office bearers in Kabaddi Federation

The Delhi High Court Tuesday stayed the election for office bearers of the Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India (AKFI) that was to be held on September 1.

Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva passed the interim order and sought response of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports and AKFI on the petition.

The court listed the matter for further hearing on September 17.

The petition filed by A C Thangavel, a former Kabaddi player from Tamil Nadu, has challenged the AKFI's three orders of August 7, 16 and 17 by which elections were notified by the administrator, electoral roll published and the objections raised by him dismissed without assigning any reasons.

The petitioner, represented through advocates Rahul Mehra and R Arunadhri Iyer, said these orders were issued contrary to the National Sports Development Code of India, 2011 and the electoral roll had members who were not qualified to be a part of the electoral college.

"The sports Code requires sports bodies to be democratically governed by ensuring that its governing body is representative, and not a mere perpetuation of a particular person or set of persons," the plea said.

"However, the Federation, by holding elections with an electoral college comprising of various persons who are holding office in member state federations contrary to the mandate of the Sports Code beyond the maximum prescribed tenure and age, is permitting and perpetuating violation of the Sports Code," it added.

It said the division bench of the Delhi High Court in its August last year judgement expressed grave concern at the undemocratic and illegal manner in which AKFI was controlled by members of one particular family for over three decades without any elections and by subversions of the provisions of the Constitution and in utter disregard of the sport of Kabaddi, the sportspersons and aspirants.

The high court had then quashed various illegal amendments to the Constitution of the Federation and had set aside the election of an ineligible person and had directed fresh elections after due amendments to the Constitution of AKFI to ensure compliance with the Sports Code, it said.

It claimed that the elections are being held contrary to multiple directions of the Federation itself, in which affiliated member state federations were directed to amend their constitutions to being it in consonance with the Sports Code.

The petition said that on August 16, AKFI, through the administrator, notified the draft of the electoral college which contained the same person whose election was held to be prima facie in violation of the Sports Code and whose inclusion in the electoral college in September 2018 was permitted only for the first election.

It would be baseless and futile to conduct the upcoming elections in direct violation of the Sports Code, it claimed.