CHENNAI: A few days back, the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) had communicated to the Rowing Federation of India (RFI) that the national federation’s elections held last month is not valid. Firstly, proxy voting was involved in the elections that is not acceptable to the IOA. The other reason they cited was the number of votes given by each of the state associations. According to National Sports Code (NSC) — which the IOA follows — only a member/state can only cast two votes but each state association were given three votes.
However, election officer K Ramu, who submitted the final report to the sports ministry and IOA on Wednesday, has said that the proxy voting didn’t affect the outcome of the elections held on December 6. “IOA has opined that proxy voting is impermissible under the NSC, 2011. I’ve perused the NSC and I do not find any prohibition in the Code prohibiting voting by Proxy. However, it is to be noted that as detailed supra only 7 persons have exercised their right to vote by proxy system.
Even assuming that all the seven proxy voters had voted in favour of the winning candidates and all seven proxy votes are removed from the total votes secured by all winning candidates, it is found that the candidates who have been declared as elected on 06.12.2019 remains the same,” the report said.
In a letter addressed to RFI president Rajlaxmi Singh Deo a few days back, IOA president Narinder Batra had asked RFI to conduct another election within 90 days or the IOA will be forced to form an adhoc body. And Deo said she will go according to what the IOA wants.
“We are not challenging the IOA. We will abide by what the IOA has told us and amend our constitution and hold the elections again,” she told this daily. Deo also assured that the elections wont affect the Asian Championships that will be held in Bhopal this year. We were planning for November 26. But there are some problems with the boat supplier. So we might host it on 10th of of December.”