IOA term will be till 2018: Ramachandran

Briefing the press on the decision taken after the IOA's Executive Committee meeting here, he said in March 2014 the IOC wrote to him stating very clearly that election was for a term of four year. Ramachandran said “I wrote to IOC and OCA and sought their views. They have clearly stated that the term is from Feb 2014 to Feb 2018 as per the new constitution of IOA and as per Olympic charter. We are a member of IOC and we follow their guidelines. Nowhere in the IOA constitition does it say elections must be held in the Olympic year,” he added.

The IOA president said the association cannot become an NGO as suggested in some quarters as it is registered under the registrar of societies act. The meeting also discussed the different legal issues that have been coming up regularly particularly with different federations going to court and making IOA the first respondent. All this involved spending lot of money and time. He said one decision taken was to advice all the national sports federations that if they have issues they would have to go by IOA constitution otherwise IOA will decide how best to take action against them.

 The issues were mostly between individuals and the net effect was that the players suffered and this should not happen. The EC, Mr Ramachandran said, decided if there were internal disputes the issue should first come to IOA for sorting out rather than anyone rushing to thecourt at the drop of a hat. Once IOA takes a view then that was it, he said.