CHENNAI: New Year, new dawn, so it seems for the sports ministry's Mission Olympic Cell that is expected to meet on Tuesday. This would be the first meeting of the year. The meeting holds significance because of India's not so impressive show at the Olympics last year and the focus, besides other topics of sports development and training, could be on the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) list.
The meeting is expected to be attended by sports minister Mansukh Mandaviya as well. It will also be kind of a warm-up for newly-appointed Chief Executive Officer Nachhatar Singh Johal. The first challenge for the Olympian in the hot seat would be pruning or weeding out the TOPS list.
This could be one of the priorities of the MOC when they meet on Tuesday.
After the Olympics, there had been a lull in the sports ministry as well as the Sports Authority of India and this would be the first serious MOC meeting. It is understood that earlier meetings post Olympics were held to look into individual requests. And the CEO was appointed only in December.
The MOC has also undergone a makeover. It has opted for inclusivity as well. Earlier, the MOC had one or two private stakeholders running different foundations but this time the ministry has included JSW Sports, Reliance Foundation and also the two sports promotion boards of Railways and Petroleum.
This will definitely lead to equal participation and say between the private stakeholders running different foundations but at the same time, it could lead to more conflict of interests. Most of the athletes are nowadays part of these foundations and what this would indicate is that these organisations are trying to propose a plan made by them. In other words, they are the proposer and they are the disposers. How the sports ministry is going to resolve this needs to be seen. But at least, all major sports organizations will have a say in the MOC.
The TOPS list on the SAI website has about 179 athletes in the CORE group and 130 in the development group. Among the 179 in the Core group, 59 are para-athletes.
Though not on Tuesday, but sometime in the future the MOC will have to take up discussions on the next Olympic cycle and what India needs to do. There are quite a few high performance director posts vacant in some priority disciplines. Hopefully, that too would be addressed.
Some of the members who are expected to attend on Tuesday are P Gopichand (BAI chief national coach), Table Tennis Federation of India secretary Kamlesh Mehta, Kalikesh Singh Deo (NRAI president), Gagan Narang (IOA vice president) and London Olympic bronze medallist, Cyrus Poncha (SRFI secretary), Siddharth Shankar from Reliance Foundation, Manisha Malhotra (original MOC member who had stepped down will attend as part of JSW) and Aparna Popat (former India badminton player).