Hockey goes the football way, Delhi High Court appoints CoA

CoA appointed; Narinder Batra removed as IOA president, senior VP Anil Khanna is acting chiefNEW DELHI: A week after the appointment of the Committee of Administrators (CoA) in football, the Narinder Batra-controlled Hockey India (HI) also took the same direction on Wednesday. The two-judge bench of the Delhi High Court appointed a three-member CoA to run day-to-day affairs of HI after observing that the national sports federation (NSF) has violated the provisions of the sports code, 2011. The bench of Justices Najmi Wajiri and Swarana Kanta Sharma ruled out that the appointment of Batra as 'life member' and Australian Elena Norman as 'CEO' were unconstitutional and illegitimate under the sports code. The ruling came on the petition filed by Olympian Aslam Sher Khan — a member of the Indian team that won the 1975 Hockey World Cup in Kuala Lumpur — who had alleged that HI violated the sports code by creating posts like 'life member', 'life president' and 'CEO' to benefit Batra and Norman.

The court-appointed committee will be headed by former Supreme Court judge AR Dave, and will have former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) SY Quraishi and former India captain Zafar Iqbal as its members. The committee has been directed to immediately take over the reins of HI. "In football, it is the restoration of a democratically elected body that is our main task as mandated by the SC. We still have to see the order regarding hockey and then plan the way forward," said Quraishi. Batra resigns as IOA presidentSoon after the court's verdict, Indian Olympic Association (IOA) president Batra resigned from his position as the head of the country's Olympic committee. Later, the IOA's current executive body announced that it has removed