Political interference in Sports

India always dreamt of winning medals in Olympics. Thanks to our Politicians, it is still a dream.
Here is the story of a sports development bill that was proposed by Ajay Maken in 2011.

Ajay Maken prepared a draft National Sports (Development) Bill 2011. The bill was not passed by the then corrupted government.
He got the support of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee only.

Clauses of the Ajay Maken's National Sports Development bill:-

1)There was the age limit suggested in that bill for heading any sports committee in India. The age limit was set at 70 years that was not met by most of the cabinet ministers who were heading national and state level committees as at that time.

2)The bill was seeked to restrict the tenure of any office bearer to maximum 12 years, (1 term is for 4 years, so maximum 3 terms was to be allowed.)

3)This bill was supposed to make it compulsory for sports federations to reserve 25% of the seats to sportspersons in the controlling committee/board.

4)The bill also seeked to brought Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) under the reach of Right to Information Act(RTI).

Persons who were opposing the bill, who were ministers or head of any committee at that time:-

1)Minister of New and Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah who was heading the cricket association of J&K.

2)Sharad Pawar who was President of ICC.

3)Praful Patel who was heading 'All India Football Federation'.

4)C.P. Joshi who was heading Rajasthan Cricket Association.

5)Arun Jaitley who was heading New Delhi & District cricket association.

**Although the bill got the support of Prime Minister and Finance Minister of that time, but was not passed.
The poor performance of Players and the sports committees can also be justify by the poor attitude of our Politicians and ministers. This is the time when Supreme Court of the country should interfere and make the sportsperson the head of Sports committees who knows the requirements of a sportsperson and can take the decisions that will work to develop the sports in our country.
Then the day will come when winning medal in Olympics will no longer remain a dream.