Not the one to fight shy of comments and one to profess his love for Olympic disciplines, hockey in particular, Gill is not one minister you will forget soon.
It is said that politicians in Parliament often greet Union sports minister MS Gill saying they were scared of him when he was the election commissioner and that they were waiting to see him get the better of sports officials.
Gill need not have been inspired by those words, but his latest directive is a landmark step taken by a ministry that has, in the past, maintained a very, very low profile.
Even as Indian Olympic Association (IOA) officials kept stressing on the chance of suspension from international events and the upcoming Commonwealth Games being in jeopardy, Gill insisted that limiting the tenure of sports federations’ office-bearers would not have no bearing on the October 3-14 event.
“We have made it clear that all office bearers continue their work. As and when future elections come, which are mainly in 2012, 2013 and 2014, these regulations will apply,” Gill said here on Tuesday.
“The IOC says 12 years for the president, age limit of 70 and we said we will go with that. So now 12 years. But if somebody wants 12 into 30 and plus 40 I have nothing to say. That’s all we have done. Nothing more, nothing less,” he said.
“Let me explain what we have precisely done. In the time of Mrs Indira Gandhi (1974-75), these regulations were issued by the education sports ministry limiting terms among other things for better management and promotion of sports in India. That was the fundamental objective. “However, these had been set aside in a casual order in August 2002 by the then minister. We have restored the regulations of 1974-75. I have made no new regulations of my own.”
The ministry’s attempts to curb the never-ending tenure of federation officials, triggered though by a petition in the Delhi high court, comes just days after Gill said that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was responsible for running the IPL and that the ministry had it on its radar.
Not the one to fight shy of comments and one to profess his love for Olympic disciplines, hockey in particular, Gill is not one minister you will forget soon.
Quick to extol striking players to re-join the hockey camp ahead of the World Cup or state governments to fund sports, he has been willing to reach out. But there have also been times when his words have not been well received, especially when he said that the Indian football team could lose to schoolboys from Australia.
He also once compared Formula 1 to “expensive entertainment”.
Gill has taken pains to get sports awards redesigned and will make every effort to ensure they are respected too. He was quick to criticise MS Dhoni and Harbhajan Singh when they did not come to receive the Padma awards, and passed a directive that such awards be received in person. In the latest conflict with sports officials though, the minister has looked willing to charter new terrain.
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