Silchar, May 12: The Assam Olympic Association (AOA), affiliated with the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), in its Annual General Meeting held on May 5 took a resolution and adopted some steps against the District Sports Association (DSA) Silchar stating that "The Annual General Meeting of Assam Olympic Association held on 5th May 2022 at Vivanta by Taj, Guwahati has unanimously resolved to cease the membership, i.e., affiliation of District Sports Association (DSA) Silchar for the following reasons: a. The election held in the BGM on 24-11-2019 to elect the current Governing Body of District Sports Association Silchar was unconstitutional. b. The Governing Body elected in the unconstitutional election tried to disaffiliate 20 of its member units through an SGM to be held on 31/10/2021 C. District Sports Association Silchar made some derogatory and unacceptable comments on Assam Olympic Association in Media which were largely published on 02/11/2021."
Further, the AOA said that a three-member committee has been formed to oversee the matters of DSA Silchar.
In this backdrop, Pranabananda Das, a veteran sports journalist and sports administrator of Barak Valley has filed a suit at the Court of the Civil Judge no.1 against the functionaries of the AOA, the principal defendant, the Silchar DSA and the IOA as the proforma defendants.
Addressing a media interaction on Tuesday, Das termed the decision taken by the AOA against the DSA Silchar as detrimental to the objective of healthy growth of sports in the state and said "My contention in the court is that the decision taken by the AOA in the meeting on May 5 against the DSA Silchar is unconstitutional and arbitrary. The DSA Silchar is an independent and autonomous body much like the AOA. In the past two years, the authorities of the DSA Silchar had well and truly followed all the directions of the AOA, the parent body, and repeatedly responded regarding the issues related to the last BGM. Unfortunately, the AOA never showed any interest to negotiate and solve the issues. Rather, steps were taken to withdraw the affiliation of the sports association. We have tried all our resources to solve the issue and work to spot the flaws in the Constitution of the DSA Silchar and make necessary amendments. Being a scribe associated with sports for over the past three decades, I feel the DSA Silchar, established in 1957, has been insulted and my plea before the honourable Court is to seek justice to nullify the decision taken by the AOA against the DSA Silchar. If the resolution of the AOA stands, the Olympic sports and the future of the athletes will badly suffer which has hurt me significantly."
On the other hand, Advocate Souman Choudhury, the legal counsellor of Das informed that the latter is a member of the GB of the DSA Silchar and also a member of the general council has individually filed the case for protection of his constitutional and legal rights and sought justice before the Court bearing Title suit number 101 of 2022 to annul the decision taken by the AOA on May 5, 2022. "We have also filed a case regarding injunction restraining the effectiveness of the resolution taken by the AOA on May 5 regarding DSA Silchar," advocate Choudhury informed.
