Indian football's stakeholders must learn lessons from FIFA ban: Sunando Dhar

World football governing body FIFA suspended the AIFF on August 15 for "undue influence by third parties" but revoked it after the Supreme Court dissolved the Committee of Administrators (CoA) constituted by it after the ouster of Praful Patel as head of the national federation for not holding polls due in December 2020. "Hopefully, this should be the first and last suspension of the AIFF. We should have followed the process correctly.

We should not bypass due process," Dhar told PTI when asked about the lessons the country should learn from the whole episode. "The elections of the AIFF were due in 2020 and for whatever reasons they were not held for one and a half years. If the elections were held on time, the administrators would not have been appointed by the Supreme Court and there would not have been the subsequent suspension," he said in an interview.

"We should now look inwards and in future should never come to a point where the FIFA or the AFC can think of suspending India." It was the first suspension in the 85-year-old history of the AIFF and it had jeopardised India's chances of hosting the FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup from October 11-30. "FIFA had to take a call if they had to shift the venue (of the U-17 Women's World Cup) and they always had a back-up plan which we knew. So, when there was no solution in sight, I think FIFA took the call to suspend India.