Saurabh Das/Associated PressA meeting of the Indian Olympic Association in New Delhi on Wednesday.NEW DELHI – India’s Olympic Association defied the International Olympic Committee this week and held elections whose results officials in Switzerland said were not valid and would be ignored.
But while international officials remained adamant Thursday that India needed to undertake fundamental reforms before being allowed back into the Olympic fold, officials in India said that the entire controversy was
the result of a misunderstanding that could be cleared up with a chat.
On Tuesday, the International Olympic Committee suspended India from participating in the Olympic movement because India’s Olympic leaders are too old, too long-serving and
too tainted. The suspension has been widely seen as an enormous embarrassment to the world’s second most populous nation.
Vijay Kumar Malhotra, who was the acting president of the Indian Olympic Association until Wednesday and was in charge when relations with officials in Switzerland reached the breaking point, said in an interview Thursday that India’s Olympic leaders planned to gather Friday to put together an easy-to-understand explanation to mollify the international committee.
“So we will go to the I.O.C. and explain the situation,” Mr. Malhotra said, referring to the international committee. “We will ask them to withdraw the suspension.”
International rules forbid Olympic leaders from serving beyond the age of 70 or for longer than eight years. Mr. Malhotra, 81, is one of many sports leaders in India who defies both restrictions and plans to continue doing so.
“In the archery association where I am the president, we did not follow the government code and we told them that if you do not recognize us, do so, we are not worried,” he said. “I am above 70 and I became the president and have been since 1975.” (The archery association was “de-recognized” by India’s Ministry of Sports on Friday, because of Mr. Malhotra’s age).
In an e-mail sent Thursday, Pere Miro, a spokesman for the International Olympic Committee, said that the Indian association “is not entitled to hold any elections without express prior approval of the I.O.C. We therefore do not recognize any elections the body may have held since being suspended as they are null and void.”
“This issue has been ongoing for more than two years and the I.O.C.’s position has been expressed to all parties concerned on numerous occasions,” Mr. Miro wrote.
In response, the Indian Olympic Committee released a press statement Thursday night defending its election.
“The general body also discussed the International Olympic Council’s [sic] statement that the elections were null and void and wish to clarify that the polls took place with a well laid-out procedure and there is nothing to believe otherwise,” the group stated.
Boria Majumdar, a history professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said the government should remove the leaders of the Indian Olympic Association.
“They had the last two years to get their house in order and to prevent national shame,” Mr. Majumdar said. “But none of them have been willing to put the national interests over their own self interests.”
On Wednesday, the Indian Olympic Association elected Lalit Bhanot as its secretary general even though Mr. Bhanot is currently on bail and facing corruption charges related to his role in the scandal-plagued 2010 Commonwealth Games.
Mr. Bhanot became internationally famous for explaining the poor sanitation standards in the Commonwealth Games’ athletes’ village as the result of differing standards of cleanliness between India and the Western world.
Abhay Singh Chautala, the newly elected president of the Indian Olympic Association, will meet Friday with Jitendra Singh, the Indian government’s sports minister, to discuss his group’s suspension, according to a press statement. Jitendra Singh has publicly criticized the Indian Olympic Association for failing to follow international guidelines. He also offered to broker a compromise between the Indian association and the international committee.
Top sporting positions in India provide prestige, international travel benefits and some control over sports jobs, and Indian officials have been loathe to surrender those privileges. Their oversight of India’s sports scene has failed to deliver much glory to the country. The 2012 Olympics were its most successful ever, but India won only six medals and failed to win a single gold. In its entire history, India has won 26 medals; the American swimmer Michael Phelps alone has won 22 medals.