NEW DELHI: None of India's national sports federations (NSF) stand recognised by the sports ministry in the current year, as all of them are awaiting renewal of their annual recognition since November 2021, TOI has learnt. This has impacted the federations' plans to conduct their national championships and other domestic events in the country.
A federation receives an annual grant of Rs 22 lakh under the scheme of assistance to NSFs from the ministry for organising a senior (Rs 5 lakh), junior (Rs 7 lakh) and sub-junior national (Rs 10 lakh). But without recognition, the NSFs haven't been able to receive this money.
The ministry has also been encouraging the NSFs to bring more international sporting events to the country in the run up to the 2024 Paris Olympics. India has not been able to organise enough global competitions in Olympic disciplines at home since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic two years ago. To host international tournaments in future, the federations require the renewal of their annual recognition. Currently, there are about 61 NSFs recognised by the ministry as per the information available on its website.
According to annexure 15 of the 2011 national sports development code of India (NSDCI), the ministry is supposed to receive the performance chart of every NSF latest by December 15 of every year and, after evaluating the submission, grants the annual recognition by January end.
This time, however, the recognition has been delayed due to several factors. These include legal cases faced by some federations in different courts of the country where the 'Union of India' is one of the respondents; non-alignment of constitution/memorandum of association (MoA) by certain NSFs with the provisions of the sports code; non-hosting of audited accounts and balance sheets of previous years on their federations' website as mandated by the ministry in its circular dated Feb 26, 2015 and nondisclosure of utilisation of funds a s approved under the annual competition and training calendar (ACTC) budget, among others.
