With Indian Basketball languishing due to politics in the BFI, FIBA steps in to intercede

Their fate hangs in the balance

The administration of sports governing bodies in India seems to have an inverse relationship with the very sports they have been charged with nurturing. The lows their politicking have stooped to have resulted in heights of despair for the athletes aspiring to do their nation proud on the international stage. But levity aside, this is no truer than in the case of Indian basketball.

The state of Indian basketball is in such doldrums that it has prompted a letter from FIBA, the International Basketball Association, which is as much a diatribe as as it is a petition.The letter, from FIBA Sectretary Patrick Baumann to Sarbananda Sonowal, Minister of State-Independent Charge for Youth Affairs and Sports, implores the latter to immediately recognise the faction of the Basketball Federation of India led by K. Govindaraj.

FIBA had officially recognized the Bengaluru election of Shri K Govindaraj and the new group of elected officials on 23rd May 2015. However, despite this official recognition, the Indian Sports Ministry, along with the Indian Olympic Association have failed to grant official status to this group, for four months now (and counting), which is crippling the development of the sport in the country.

The worst affected are the members of the Men’s National Basketball team, who qualified for the quarter-finals of the recently concluded FIBA Asia Basketball Championhships after a record 12-year gap. Current members of the team have bemoaned the detriment the petty politics is having on the team, inlcuding the banning of a few players who rose up in protest against the quandary.

FIBA itself addressed the distressing scenario wherein the team was without certain key players who were not allowed to take part in this Championship on the behest of Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports and certain individuals who have vested interests. The letter states: ” FIBA takes note of absence of key Indian players in the national squad due to political interference and threats by “persons or indirectly part of the parallel General Meeting held in Pune the day after the holding of the valid BFI General Meeting.”

Earlier this year in March, two factions of the Basketball Federation of India,one led by K. Govindaraj and the other by Poonam Mahajan, held their elections in Bengaluru and Pune respectively. The Indian Olympics Association’s observer was present at the Pune elections, while FIBA dispatched representatives to both for observation of the proceedings. After the process, FIBA officially recognized the Govindaraj faction as the newly elected BFI, but in a bizarre twist, the IOA handed the mandate to the Poonam Mahajan faction.

In the letter, Baumann is explicit in his stating that the the delay in recognition of a sovereign body has led to “the institutional situation of the BFI” to remain “extremely fragile” and “subject to unacceptable pressures that hinder the proper development of basketball” in the country. It is heart-breaking that the situation has deteriorated this far, with the Indian Cagers showing such a resurgence.

At this point, those asking the BFI to tend to the duties they are charged with, setting aside self-conceit for altruism, might well be tremed unreasonable. But one can only hope that enough voices unite to speak up for those who shouldn’t have to, but are forced to hold their tongues in fear.