The Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI’s) decision to releases ₹10 crore for assisting India’s Olympic campaign in Tokyo has not gone down too well with some of the associations.
While none of the State association representatives voiced their concern over the proposed move during zonal videoconferenceing meets on Sunday before the apex council stamped the decision, some units pointed out that the “previous experience” with the Sports Ministry was far from being pleasant.
In 2008, the BCCI had set aside a corpus of ₹50 crore for a joint venture along with the ministry for what was known as National Sports Development Fund (NSDF). But according to Ratnakar Shetty, who was the BCCI’s chief administrative officer then, the ministry never provided details of how the fund was utilised.
“The NSDF was to be formed with a corpus of ₹80 crore — with the Ministry of Sports to contribute remaining ₹30 crore. After the 2010 Commonwelath Games, there was no sign of a detailed report about utilisation of funds,” Shetty told The Hindu on Monday.
“I filed an RTI in personal capacity and the reply was shocking. Only ₹8 crore was spent. It is obviously nice that the BCCI wants to support other sports but it should first ask what’s happened to the money that was already donated. What was it utilised for?”
Shetty also pointed out that it was the contribution of ₹50 crore to the NSDF that resulted in the authorities revoking tax exemption on BCCI. “It was remarked that supporting other sports was not an object of the BCCI as defined in the memorandum of association and the BCCI’s appeal is still pending in the Bombay High Court.”
(Courtesy: The Hindu)
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