UPA revives Sports Bill after 18 months

The UPA government has revived the National Sports Development Bill aimed at bringing cricket under the government’s control almost 18 months after it was put on the back burner by the Union Cabinet, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Mar 29, 2013, 19:42:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The UPA government has revived the National Sports Development Bill aimed at bringing cricket under the government’s control almost 18 months after it was put on the back burner by the Union Cabinet.

The timing of the sports ministry’s decision to set up a committee headed by former chief justice of Punjab and Haryana high court Mukul Mudgal to re-examine the draft bill is curious.

It comes at a time when NCP chief Sharad Pawar, who also heads the International Cricket Council, is threatening to contest the next general polls with non-Congress allies, especially in Maharashtra where the party has considerable political clout.

Pawar has also accused the Congress of ignoring the UPA allies in formulating government policies and been critical of the National Food Security Bill. Pawar is said to be not averse to the idea of a third front suggested by SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.

The sports ministry, however, disagrees with any relations between Pawar and its move on the sports development bill.

“The bill is being reviewed to bring transparency in the functioning of the national sports bodies and overcome the opposition to the proposed legislation by state governments,” a ministry statement said.

What the ministry fails to answer is the reason for the 18-month delay in initiating the process after the union cabinet’s instruction to the ministry for re-drafting the bill in mid-2011, keeping in view the observations of different ministers.

The bill was anchored by then sports minister Ajay Maken, who was replaced by Jitender Singh in the Cabinet reshuffle of 2012. Singh also took about four months to set in motion the process to have a legislation to make sports management transparent and effective.

The Mudgal committee has also been asked to examine constituting separate bodies such as the Sports Election Commission, a dispute resolution tribunal and an ethics committee. The ministry also wants the committee to examine a separate sports development bill for enactment by the states as the present bill only covers national sport federations. The committee will also have to submit rules to enforce the National Sports Development Bill.

Although the committee’s mandate looks impressive, many legal experts say enacting a bill in about a year before next general elections was a difficult task. “If the government has failed to enact a sports law since 1997, I wonder how it will do the same in a year,” said a senior government functionary.

The National Sports Bill not only faces opposition from NCP, it is also opposed by a strong section in the BJP.

Salient features of the Bill:
* The bill covers all sports, including cricket

* Makes registration of sports body with the government mandatory

* Provides more representation to sportsperson in managing sports bodies

* Prescribe retirement age and rules for conducting elections to sports bodies

* Set up National Sports Development Council for nurturing of future sportspersons

* Also provides statutory backing to National Anti-Doping Agency

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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