NEW DELHI: India’s Supreme Court intervened on Friday to ensure the national men’s and women’s hockey teams took part in their own Commonwealth Games in October.
The teams had faced the prospect of missing the October 3-14 Games in New Delhi over a deadlock on who ran the sport in the country.
While the International Hockey Federation (FIH) has recognised Hockey India as the parent body, the sports ministry wanted the revived Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) to take charge again.
The ministry’s decision followed a lower court order in July that restored the IHF, two years after it was dissolved by the country’s Olympic chiefs over bribery allegations and poor on-field results.
The Indian Olympic Association had sacked the IHF in April 2008 and appointed a new body, Hockey India, to run the sport in the country.
A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Friday directed the Indian Olympic Association and Hockey India to select the two teams for the Games, pending a fuller verdict.
“We direct as an interim measure that IOA and HI will field the Indian team for men and women hockey in the Commonwealth Games,” the Press Trust of India (PTI) quoted the ruling as saying.
India, once the masters of field hockey with eight Olympic titles, failed to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and finished eighth in the World Cup in New Delhi in March this year.
The FIH last month announced that India would be the venue for the 2011 Champions Trophy following the success of the World Cup. —AFP
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