Chandigarh Olympic Association office-bearers meet IOA president

Deepankar Sharda

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 25

If office-bearers of the Chandigarh Olympic Association (COA) would have worked hard to conduct a single tournament in the past 14 years, this day would have never come when they meet the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) president just for a show of strength to gain claim of the next four-year term.

Trying every possible way to grab COA’s power, one of the factions of the association met the IOA chief Narinder Dhruv Batra, on his personal visit to Chandigarh and attending the annual general elections of the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI), held in Panchkula on Wednesday.

Instead of discussing COA’s performance and achievements, the purpose of the meeting was ‘show of strength’ to get Batra’s support in the upcoming elections scheduled for March 17.

‘Performance and achievements’ perhaps are never part of the COA functioning as it failed to conduct any activity in the past 14 years, which was also highlighted by Batra. Sources, who attended the meeting, confirmed that Batra snubbed some office-bearers for doing nothing in all these years and directed them to include ‘sports promoters’ instead of ‘opportunistic’.

“The meeting was fine until some office-bearers started talking about the number of units affiliated with the association as a mark of strength to impress Batra. However, he (Batra) clearly said that he is on a personal visit and will not hear anything about the strength,” said a source.

“He (Batra) clearly said it’s high time that the COA should bring some people for promoting sports. One of the former Chandigarh Police personnel, who is also a member of the COA, argued that bringing some other people would lead to revolt, to which he (Batra) replied that those who believe in revolt and doing nothing to promote should be immediate shunted out from any sports association,” confirmed the source.

Sources also maintained that other faction of the COA also met Batra and claimed its stakes in the association.

Action on the cards!

Sources claimed that the general house of the COA was expected to announce some action against allotting fake affiliations to the association and over financial bungling on Friday. “Yes, for the first time in the history of the COA, action has been taken against the culprits. A notification in this regard will be made public soon,” said a source.