New Delhi: Praful Patel who has been re-elected for the post of President of the All India Sports Federation today voiced his concern over the sports code and has opined that the government should either make the code a law or bring all the sports federations under their aegis.

Patel elected unanimously for his second straight term today said the situation will not get resolved as there always will be some grey areas remaining.

"Unless the government passes this code as an act, there will always be some grey area. The parliament should make it a law or else the government should take over all the sports federation," Patel told the reporters at the Football House here.

The Delhi High Court had earlier ordered the AIFF to conduct the elections according to the sports code. The football body kept the spirit of sports code in mind and followed the AIFF constitution while conducting the elections.

"We followed the constitution of AIFF. We kept in mind the spirit of the sports code and have fulfilled the code’s two main criteria, age and tenure,” Patel added.

"We have not violated the code. We did not get any direct order from the court. There are some points in the sports code which comes in conflict with the international (sports) federations. And this overlapping is creating problems for the federations and it is not about AIFF but other bodies too. And about implementing the sports code it cannot be implemented fully until the constitution of the AIFF is fully amended," said the Union Minister.

The sports ministry had earlier de-recognised the Archery Association of India (AAI) and suspended the Indian Amateur Boxing Federation (IABF) for not following the National Sports Code in their elections.

By Samikshan Dutta Choudhury
Indian Sports News