Burdened with more than 200 litigations, the new office-bearers of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) have formed a dedicated legal team to deal with court matters in a professional manner.
Legal wrangles have been hampering the day-to-day functioning of the country’s nodal sports body, which is affecting their primary work of athletes’ welfare.
The IOA also said in a statement on Friday that a decision had been taken to re-hire the current auditors M/S Dinesh Mehta & Co for the financial year 2022-23, and also employ “a new auditor for internal forensic audit to get things right from the beginning”.
The new IOA setup, with legendary sprinter PT Usha as its president, came into existence recently and the “office-bearers are keen on setting up a smooth system of operations with the national sports federations (NSFs)”.
The new IOA, comprising chiefly of eminent sportspersons, is aiming to improve governance, bring about fiscal prudence and work for athletes’ welfare.
“A meeting between IOA and NSFs will be organised shortly and proposals and suggestions will be heard from the NSFs,” said the IOA statement.
The IOA has also sent letters to all the NSFs to settle their accounts with the national sports governing body by March next year.
In order to bring more professionalism to the organisation, the IOA has also initiated the process to hire a CEO. In the interim, IOA’s new joint secretary, Kalyan Chaubey, will perform the duties of CEO.
“A CEO will be hired as per the constitution of IOA by forming a commission, which will select and also advertise for the same. As per the order and guidelines of Hon. Supreme Court Jt Secretary, IOA’s Kalyan Chaubey will discharge the duties of CEO till the new appointment,” said the statement.
Besides, the IOA executive committee will also streamline the process of getting sponsorship deals for the organisation in the future.
“We will be creating an organised and transparent system for attracting sponsorship and marketing deals,” said Chaubey.
The house also agreed not to hand exclusive rights to any company for marketing and sponsorship, instead exploring sponsorships and CSR funding on a game-to-game basis.
The IOA also said that the registration for the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) will be initiated soon for getting foreign remittances.
On the issue of providing assistance to athletes in both Olympic and non-Olympic disciplines, the EC also said they will request the NSFs to “submit proposals of athletes across different sports”.
“Support will be given to them (athletes) keeping in mind the long-term development of athletes, concentrating on the 2024 and 2028 Olympic Games. A system should be created for managing and getting the maximum benefit from different programmes under the IOC (International Olympic Committee) banner, which can be explored by the Athletes’ Commission in cohesion with the EC,” said the statement.
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