New Delhi: In the last couple of years, the All India Football Federation has grabbed headlines mostly for the wrong reasons, based on corruption charges and its series of questionable decisions in running the game in the country.
Adding to it is a fresh set of allegations against the president Kalyan Chaubey and the secretary general Anilkumar Prabhakaran from within the organisation saying they have taken deliberate decisions to deny the AIFF employees their legitimate dues.
The AIFF has its headquarters in Dwarka, Delhi. The four-storey building, Football House, was built on FIFA grants in 2005 and currently houses more than 60 full-time employees in different departments like National Teams, Competitions, Technical, Coaching, Media, Referees, etc.
For the last few months, isolated voices of discontent over deliberate delay in agreed pay rises and the widening gap in salaries between top officials and lower-tier staff could be heard within the corridors of the Football House.
But the issue became a piece of public knowledge soon after one of its former employees, Jaydeep Basu, who was the AIFF’s director of communication and Media, till March 10, 2025, sent a mail to the AIFF executive committee members pointing out how vested interests were at the root of mistreating and exploiting the AIFF staff members.
A veteran football journalist who had worked in the country’s major newspapers for more than 35 years, Basu is widely considered ‘a walking encyclopedia of Indian football’.
In a shocking allegation, Basu said the AIFF top brass is “cheating” the employees in terms of salaries and pay hikes with a vested interest in mind.
“They have left the staff completely demotivated and frustrated. The majority of the staff feel that the appalling lack of ability of the top management to guide and raise a vision has totally derailed the progress of the game in India,” he wrote in the email to executive committee members.
Artificial crisis
On March 17, a week after he was relieved of his duties without being given an acceptable reason, Basu brought to notice how a narrative of the crisis of funds had been artificially cultivated to deny employees legitimate dues.
The AIFF had agreed to roll out increments from August 2024 after getting the nod from a two-member committee (both executive committee members) specifically formed to look into the matter. But once the new full-time general secretary Anilkumar P joined office in August, he made sure to put that approval on hold, initially for 15 days, saying he needed to take “stock of the situation”.
It was then propagated how offering increments to staff members would be “suicidal” for the financially stressed organisation. It was also mooted that hikes hinged on AIFF’s negotiations of renewal of Master Rights Agreements (MRA) with its marketing partners, pushing the date of implementation of the two-member committee’s recommendations till April 2025.
Not much was gained when the intervention of president Kalyan Chaubey was requested, but it did bring forth an announcement of implementing hikes from January 2025, effectively a ploy to deny staff their legitimate dues for five months (August 2024 to December 2024), Basu alleged.
“Kalyan Chaubey went a step ahead. He called a staff meeting and announced a salary hike will be undertaken with a backlog from January 2025. In one swift announcement, he made it clear that the staff would be denied their dues for five months….” Basu wrote.
It went from bad to worse when the increments were implemented. “Then came the increments, which were arbitrary, whimsical and rather autocratic,” Basu wrote, adding that hikes were issued “most randomly”.
Favouritism and biases were evident among all in the Football House in the manner the entire process was handled, for which the head of departments were blamed for submission of “unfair” reports on staff appraisals.
Efforts to establish communication with the president proved futile, and like a broken record, no money in the coffers was pointed out every time someone broached the topic of a pay rise.
SUVs and drivers
“But there is no dearth of money for buying a top model SUV for Rs. 33 lakh (or more), which is mainly used for ferrying the SG from home to office and back,” Basu said.
“There is no dearth of money when an office bearer comes to Delhi, stays in the office guest house, which is just 500 yards away from Football House and still makes sure that a rented SUV remains stationed at his doorstep from morning till evening.
“There is no dearth of money when the AIFF pays Rs 11 lakh a day to a lawyer for appearing on its behalf in the Constitution case in the Supreme Court though the AIFF, as an organisation, doesn’t have too much at stake in it.
“There is no dearth of money when an official’s personal lawyer is engaged in a case and the AIFF pays for it and when the AIFF decides to employ a third driver on its roll despite having two drivers whose services are extremely underused.
Some received two increments in one financial year; some got double promotions, as they belonged to a particular state.
“There is no one to bother about when an office staff is excused from reporting for duty at the Football House and instead allowed to land himself at a hospital to attend to the ailing mother-in-law of an AIFF office bearer,” Basu pointed out.
This bitter saga of “maladministration and gross misuse of power and money” within the AIFF has left its employees deflated and forced to go through the motions.
“To put it straight, the current management of the AIFF, with Kalyan Chaubey and Anilkumar P at the helm, has reduced the Football House from a professional setup to a roadside grocery shop with their remarkable inefficiency,” was Basu’s observation.
The AIFF or its executive committee members are yet to speak on the matter.
A fresh set of allegations against president Kalyan Chaubey and secretary general Anilkumar Prabhakaran has surfaced from within the organisation saying they have taken deliberate decisions to deny the AIFF employees their legitimate dues. Football Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
