CHENNAI: The Rowing Federation of India (RFI) has responded to the sports ministry’s letter regarding the renewal of its recognition. The RFI has informed the ministry that an extraordinary general body meeting will be held on January 25 in Hyderabad to amend the constitution of the federation.
According to president Rajlaxmi Singh Deo, the re-elections will be held in mid-February as per the guidelines of Sports Code 2011. The RFI has also requested the ministry to extend the February 1 deadline to February 29 so that they can address all the objections raised.
Proxy voting from state associations/members and three votes per state/member were the reasons cited by the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) for not recognising the elections held on December 6, 2019.
It can be noted that the RFI constitution contains the provision of proxy voting since 1976 and elections had been carried out without any objections from the ministry or IOA. The constitution also has the provision of three votes. Due to gender equality, one woman voter was introduced as a mandatory requirement. But Deo assured that the needful will be done.
"Proxy voting and gender equality points will be amended. Out of 25 members, seven are associates and 18 are voting members. It will 36 votes overall. But we have asked the other seven to fulfil the conditions for full membership. We were very concerned that the ministry found us lacking in implementing the sports code. It was never our intention. Now that it has been brought to our attention, we will amend the constitution and have re-elections according to that," Deo said.
The ministry had also raised the issue of ineligibility of newly-elected secretary general MV Sriram. He had served as secretary for two terms and according to the ministry, has to take a cooling-off break.
However, Deo said this won’t be a problem for him during re-elections. "Sriram was not eligible to contest elections till December 29. Re-election will mostly be held on February 23. So there won’t be an issue," Deo said.