New Delhi: The air of discontent is palpable within the All India Football Federation with members now willing to stand up against what they deem as ‘undemocratic’ and ‘unconstitutional’ ways of president Kalyan Chaubey.
Their displeasure was made evident in AIFF’s executive committee meeting last Saturday, where Manolo Marquez was named the men’s national team’s new head coach, relegation wasn’t implemented in the Indian Super League and a new full-time secretary was appointed.
All these decisions raised more questions than it provided answers, pointing to the shifting sands of equation within Chaubey’s committee that came into power in September 2022.
The former goalkeeper enjoyed a landslide 33-1 victory over Bhaichung Bhutia to become president. And not surprisingly Bhutia has raised opposing voices by questioning the manner Marquez was hired even without consultation of the technical committee.
Questionable decisions
Being a part of the technical panel that is chaired by IM Vijayan he resigned in protest, pointing out how Chaubey had ‘bypassed’ AIFF’s constitutional statutes to chose Igor Stimac’s successor.
Even before hiring, the firing of Stimac had raised eyebrows. Then too a separate committee was formed to sack the coach without any notice, offering only three months compensation.
The offer was outrightly rejected along with a wrath from Stimac, who threatened to drag the AIFF in front of a FIFA tribunal over unilateral termination of contract.
Should his complaint be upheld in Zurich, the AIFF would have to pay multi-crore damage settlement to Stimac that would cripple the already stretched coffers of the AIFF further.
To ease the burden, it was agreed to ‘share’ Marquez with Indian Super League side FC Goa, with whom he has a contract till May 2025.
Though not unprecedented in Indian or world football, it is not an ideal arrangement either with questions of conflict of interest bound to rise sooner rather than later.
Similarly, deferring relegation from ISL even after the Asian Football Confederation’s insistence on it is being viewed as a soft move to appease AIFF’s marketing partners, who own and control the top-flight tournament.
With the appointment of Anil Kumar as the AIFF’s new full-time secretary general, Chaubey moved quickly to fill up the executive committee spot vacated by the Kerala Football Association secretary.
His intention of inducting Gujarat State Football Association general secretary Mulrajsinh Chudasama into the Ex Co has not been viewed kindly by many other members present in the meeting in New Delhi on Saturday.
‘Unconstitutional’
It has prompted Bengal’s state unit, the Indian Football Association’s president Ajit Banerjee to send a letter to Chaubey, pointing out that such an act would be a violation of AIFF’s constitution and democratic procedure.
“From the meeting, I got to know that you are inducting Mr Mulrajsinh Chudasama as a member of the Executive Committee, AIFF following the resignation of Mr Anil Kumar,” Banerjee, a special invitee at the executive committee meeting, wrote.
“However, I would like to point out that the post of an executive committee member is an elected post and a proper electoral process needs to be followed involving all the Member Associations of the Association as per AIFF’s constitution.
“The induction of Mr Chudasama into the Executive Committee hence is unconstitutional and the fact that he was inducted through an executive committee meeting is also a violation of the democratic procedure of an election.”
Banerjee is not the only one, another executive committee member, whose name New9 Sports isn’t willing to disclose, has tendered his resignation from two sub-committees in protest against Mulraj’s appointment.
Not a happy family: All is not well within the AIFF. Photo: @IndianFootball
Too many committees, too little work
Committee to fire a coach, committee to hire a coach, committee to supervise the activities of secretary, committee to study AIFF’s agreement with its marketing partners, committee to probe contentious clause of termination etc, it seems there is no end to formation of committees without much tangible outcome.
One was named ‘core committee’, another ‘special committee’, some haven’t been given any such moniker but has evoked a sense of bureaucratic red-tapism that should not have been encouraged.
But as a section of the AIFF have pointed out, it has been used as a tool for appeasement, either to whom Chaubey remains indebted or to silence opposing voices or to get his way without taking reponsibility for it.
Nominated from the Gujarat State Football Association to contest for the AIFF presidency, Chaubey has tried to return the favour by inviting Chudasama to every executive committee as a special guest and intending to make him the head of the competitions committee too.
Banerjee reminded Chaubey that he became the AIFF president through a nomination from Gujarat FA and inducting Chudasama into the executive committee is again a violation of the federation’s constitution.
“Furthermore, you got elected as the President following primary nomination from the Gujarat State Football Association. Hence there are now multiple representations from a single state which is also a violation of the constitution,” he wrote.
“As a matter of fact, even discussing about the vacancy and who should fill in is a malpractice and is against election ethics. Hence, I urge your kind office to withdraw Mr Chudasama’s induction and hold a general body meeting with the agenda of a fair election to fill the vacancy, following all the rules and regulations of the Federation.”
Banerjee has expressed a wish to nominate IFA secretary Anirban Dutta to contest for the vacant post and urged Chaubey to initiate proceedings for a formal electoral procedure to prevent his habit of bypassing all laws and norms to have it his way.
While resigning from the technical committee for not being consulted while appointing Marquez, Bhutia too raised the arbitrary way of handling things, in the garb of committees.
Initially his attempts were either glossed over or accepted without battling an eyelid but now objections are being raised at every step.
Hollow ideas
Grappling with multiple corruption allegations, Chaubey has protested against motive of these objections, claiming in an interview to a Bengali youtube channel recently that he has been deliberately stalled to carry out developmental ideas.
The former keeper pointed out to his failed attempts to launch an AIFF app and in-house channel to telecast matches, the delayed barter deal with Indigo and the stalled goalkeeper academy to support his claim.
It was once famously said that former FIFA president Sepp Blatter had “50 new ideas everyday, 51 of them were bad”. Federation insiders claim Chaubey is equally bad if not worse, despite being a player in the not too distant past.
His displeasure has been viewed as a sign of frustration as he has increasingly found it difficult to keep a lid on dissenting voices with murmurs of the president losing ground beginning to float in the corridors of the Football House.
Recent decisions taken by president Kalyan Chaubey have been extremely unpopular within the AIFF Football Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
