Several years after being in the wilderness, the Gymnastics Federation of India (GFI) heaved a sigh of relief when the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports restored its annual recognition. Having been an outcast since 2011 – barring a brief period from July 2014 to March 2015 – the recognition will boost the sport which has languished without national-level competitions for close to a decade.
However, the Ministry’s letter to the GFI President, former Competition Commission of India Chairman, Sudhir Mittal has a rider. It said they would wait for the Manipur High Court’s decision before rejecting or accepting S Shanti Kumar Singh’s election as Secretary-General for the third term. In July 2020, it held Shanti Kumar Singh should have been on a cooling off period. He has since secured a stay on the Ministry’s notification.
As it did with the case of all other National Sports Federations in recent months, the Ministry has told the GFI that its constitution needs to be aligned with the provisions of the National Sports Development Code of India 2011, within six months. Given that the Ministry had refused to grant recognition to GFI in July last, the February 26 notification comes as a pleasant surprise.
The GFI was not recognised after their July 30, 2011 elections were deemed to have been held in violation of the Ministry’s guidelines. On November 1 that year, the Ministry notified its decision not to grant recognition to GFI. Promptly, the federation moved the High Court of Punjab and Haryana against the decision.
In 2014, based on a GFI representation to the Ministry, the Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports decided to grant the beleaguered federation provisional recognition. Among the several conditions it laid down was the withdrawal of Court cases against the Ministry and the conduct of elections within three months of the completion of the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea.
The warring factions of the GFI came together to hold the elections on August 12, 2015 but did not succeed in getting the Ministry’s recognition. In mid 2019, the IOA Arbitration Tribunal ordered that the electoral roll would be finalised by the returning officer, assistant returning office and IOA observer in consultation with a three-member committee headed by Justice (retd) BC Kandpal.
The IOA also conducted arbitration procedures to resolve disputes in eight States before the elections. The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) deputed its former Secretary-General Andre Gueisbuhler as observer and IOA nominated MS Tyagi in that role. They were quick to approve the November 2019 elections in the hope that the long-standing factionalism in GFI would come to an end and the sport would move forward.
Based on its observer’s report, the Ministry had written to GFI three times in the span of as many weeks in April and May 2020, seeking error correction, but the GFI dragged its feet, inviting the action. The federation thus remained in a limbo until the Ministry had a dramatic change of heart on Friday.
The Sports Ministry supported the gymnasts’ training and competitive exposure through the Sports Authority of India. Even for the last Asian Games in Jakarta (2018), the Ministry got the Indian Olympic Association to lead the selection of the team through a special committee.
With the High Court of Manipur having suspended the Ministry’s letter of July 6, 2020 (asking for fresh elections to the Secretary-General’s post), it can only be hoped that GFI now moves ahead in right earnest and takes over its primary task of promoting the sport.