This article is written by Shristi Debuka, a student of Jindal Global Law School.
India as a growing economy, is emerging as a preferred venue for sports events like Asian Games, Commonwealth Games, and world cup of cricket as well as Hockey. However, the world of sports has been affected by controversies and scandals in past few decades. Some of the examples of these scandals can be the recent IPL scandal, the Olympic Bidding Scandal and the allegations of sexual harassment of Indian women’s Hockey team. Moreover, the Indian Hockey team who won six gold medal from the year 1928 to 1956, have failed to qualify for the 2008 Olympics. This incident has clearly exposed the narrowness and maladministration of the system.
One of the most important point to note here is that except few sports which are popular like shooting and cricket, India’s performance continues to be disappointing in other sports. Even after having a large amount of public and private investments, sports have failed to achieve a significant improvement. Accusations such as fiefdom, financial irregularities, nepotism and unaccountability are popular in sports federations. Thereby these failures are generally attributed to the governance of sports in India.
It is vital that the reliable and a transparent sports governance mechanism is established and maintained so as to maintain the sustainability and reputation of sports in India. However, a central enactment is required for the competent monitoring system and a punishment mechanism to restore reliability in the field of sports in India.
There is no such law in India to punish the unethical activity happening in sports because the Indian Penal Code does not adequately cover the issues faced by the sports. Moreover, the recent individual governing bodies for sports are not enough to bridge the gap. The central sports law shall clearly demarcate the probable cause of actions and the punishment for the potential offenders, whereby serving as a deterrent. The central sports law will also help to ensure that there is uniformity across the country to overcome the unethical activities in the sports.
There are various sport’s governing body for different sports, with different policies, in India who execute their own laws. However, they forget issues such as the labor issues, illegal termination of contracts, poor wages, exploitation of minimum working hours, etc. Therefore the central law on sports would be helpful in addressing these issues and would bring an end and ensure fair play.
The second major concern regarding the sports in India is to exploit sports to make money, since agreements generally do not provide records for the expenditure, and therefore has become common for the sports board. The third major concern related to sports is the harassment of women athletes, protecting the rights of the sportsmen should be one of the priority of the sporting law. Therefore a strong central sports law would ensure that these boards are unable to engage in such activities, also that these activates can be punished.
The issue of broadcasting of sports is another major issues. Since the sports like football and cricket generally find a desirable broadcasters, but the sports which are not so frequently watched like boxing, wrestling, hockey, kabaddi, etc have a tough time finding the broadcasting rights and have to go for under paid broadcast services. Therefore the central sports law would help in ensuring unexploited broadcasting rights for all the major sports throughout India, whereby giving access to a large number of people across the country and will benefit the sports field at large.
Except these issues, Indian sports also face problems regarding drug usage by players to enhance their performance, absence of proper organization, inability to look after retired sportsmen and corruption and various other problems. Creation of central sports law will take care of such problems and will further strive to become a well-governed mode of national recreations.
A well-defined, exhaustive and an independent authority of law is required to govern sports in this era. Moreover, the central sports law will help to promote the sportsmen spirit amongst the competitors and will also establish the desired rules of ethics which will help in solving the legal issues in a uniform manner. This central sports law will then help the administrative body to govern their respective sport in an organized manner.
There are certain things which could be done while enacting the central sports law like putting a cap on the salary of the players, making provision for new entrants. Moreover former players of the respective sport should be appointed for the better administration rather than a politician or someone with a vested interest. Age restriction, salary cap and tenure cap should be put on the office bearers of the federation, this provision may help in checking corruption. Moreover, any misuse of authority should be dealt with severely.
There have been a lot of scams, scandals in the field of sports from ages so, as to reduce such misuse, a central law for the governance of sports in today’s time have become a necessity. Enactment of the central sports law will help in good governance in the field of sports.
SOURCES
http://theopusway.com/2015/12/10/the-necessity-of-sports-laws-and-related-issues/
http://iasscore.in/national-details-61.html
http://tejas.iimb.ac.in/articles/Tejas_September%20Edition_Article%201.pdf
