IOC lays down rules for India’s return

Olympic body calls for barring of corrupt officials.

NEW DELHI:

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has told India it must bar all corruption-tainted officials from its local Olympics body if it wants to return to the Games after being banned last year, an official and reports said yesterday.

The IOC has sent a 43-page draft constitution that needs to be adopted by the suspended Indian Olympic Association (IOA) before its next elections in September, an Indian Olympics official said.

“We have received the IOC draft and we will look into it,” the official, who did not want to be named, told AFP.

Local media reported that the draft, accompanied by a letter from IOC’s head of institutional relations Jerome Poivey, stressed the need to keep corrupt officials out of sports administration.

India’s IOC membership was suspended in December after Lalit Bhanot, who is facing corruption charges linked to the scandal-hit New Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010, was elected IOA secretary-general. The country’s sports minister Jitendra Singh had met IOC officials to discuss the country’s eventual return to the Olympic fold.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 17^th, 2013.

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