The Badminton Association of India (BAI) has moved to disaffiliate the Karnataka Badminton Association (KBA) citing KBA’s non-compliance towards amending its Constitution and bringing it in line with BAI bylaws.
The bone of contention is the constitution of the KBA Executive Committee, which has 10 life members and nine district representatives in a 19-member Executive Committee, thereby reducing the districts to a minority.
Back in February, Shalini Rajneesh, Additional Chief Secretary, Youth Empowerment and Sports, Karnataka, had written to the Union Sports Ministry flagging this as an issue, and that it was a violation of clause 3.10 of the Sports Code which asks for at least 50% of the district associations to be affiliated to the state federation, which is in turn affiliated to the national body.
While it is unclear if more than 50% representation is to be reflected in the decision-making committees as well, BAI, back in March, had asked the KBA to bring its Constitution in line and given it four months’ time to do so.
The KBA, on its part, sought to create a new body named Karnataka Badminton Association — Badminton Management Committee that would deal exclusively with badminton-related activities and implement the laws as desired. But this has not found favour with the BAI.
“We have a majority of the 31 districts of Karnataka affiliated. So there is no violation,” said P. Rajesh Reddy, Secretary, KBA. “Also, KBA’s is a unique system. We are a members-run body and members fund this organisation. We have to protect their interests as well.
“We have both badminton, and non-badminton activities dealing with club house etc. So we sought to separate the two and create KBA - Badminton Management Committee just for badminton. This has proper district representation as desired. In fact, it is close to 80%. It’s not a parallel body but a body within a body. But BAI didn’t approve of it and have taken this arbitrary decision, without even giving us a show-cause notice.”
KBA’s next course of action will be decided on Friday following a meeting of its Executive Committee. Calls to Sanjay Mishra, General Secretary, BAI went unanswered.
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