The Delhi High Court refused to grant a stay order on the All India Tennis Association (AITA) elections, set to be held on September 28 but asked for the publication of the result to be withheld. The petition brought to the court by Somdev Devvarman and Purav Raja challenged the AITA’s call to hold elections and stated that they were being held while being in violation of the National Sports Development Code.
The argument made by Devvarman and Raja’s counsel was that the AITA elections were being held in a ‘clandestine manner’ and that there was no mention of the election taking place on the sports body’s website.
Senior counsel Rahul Mehra told the Indian Express that he also made his arguments on the violations that are allegedly being committed by the AITA.
“Firstly, the age and tenure restrictions. You can’t have a member running for office who is above the age of 70. No matter the post or office and not only restricted to the President, registrar and secretary, but all elected posts who are violating tenure and cooling off period. You need a minimum 25% eminent sportspersons of outstanding merit both in the general assembly of the body as well as the executive committee and these have to be elected through the athlete commission of the body,” said Mehra.
“The executive committee can’t have 25 members for a national sports federation as the AITA has. The district and state associations have to comply with all these guidelines. None of the district or state associations are in compliance with these issues or the judgment and that makes the entire electoral college illegal as they aren’t complying with the judgment,” he added.
The court while ordering the results to be withheld, made it clear that if the election was found to be in violation of the sports code, the office bearers who had been elected would not be allowed to carry out their functions and an independent ad-hoc committee could be created to run the affairs of the sport.
“I am not staying. Elections require a lot of preparation. If the election process is conducted in defiance of the subsisting directions, the office bearers will be restrained from functioning. Then we will consider appointing someone as the ad hoc (body)…That election will be set aside,” the court said. “In the meantime, the election of respondent no 2 will be subject to the outcome of the instant writ petition.. The result of the election shall not be published,” the court ordered, according to PTI.
In the petition filed by Devvarman and Raja on Monday, they had alleged that the AITA had flouted many rules that were codified in the Sports code. Mehra said that there were some base violations that were being committed.
“There are other factual violations. The current secretary is already over 70 years old and cannot contest. Almost 12 nominations have been approved by the returning officer who are violating the cooling off period,” Mehra said.
