The Committee of Administrators (CoA) and representatives of various state football association’s met on Wednesday to discuss the final draft constitution of the national federation, with it being reported that the two parties failed to come to a consensus on certain contentious issues.
The joint delegation led by FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) visited India last month, where they told the Indian stakeholders to approve a new constitution by July 31 and conduct elections by September 15, failing which the world body can ban the All India Football Federation (AIFF).
As per a report in Firstpost, the state officials were not happy and not satisfied with the outcome of the meeting, though the three-member CoA reiterated that they would take into consideration all the suggestions from the state representatives while finalising the draft constitution.
Contentious points
1.Size of the executive committee
2.Decision on principal office bearers
3.Officials cannot be members of State FA and AIFF at the time
4.Rules to elect former players as membershttps://t.co/XXMPa9O7Lo— Marcus Mergulhao (@MarcusMergulhao) July 6, 2022
“We had a fruitful meeting with the state association members and valuable suggestions were exchanged. The CoA will take into consideration all the suggestions that have come so far and finalise the constitution to be submitted to honourable Supreme Court,” CoA member SY Quraishi said in a statement.
“All efforts are being made to finalise the AIFF constitution at the earliest and place it before the honourable Supreme Court. We expect the AIFF elections to be held immediately after the apex court approves the constitution,” another CoA member Justice (Retired) Anil Dave said.
It is understood that there are still a number of points which has led to the disagreements between the two parties, with one major disagreement being he application of age and tenure rules to all the executive council members of the state associations.
If the new constitution is not approved and elections are not conduced by the date set by the joint delegation of FIFA-AFC, then India most likely face a ban – which means that they would lose the right to host the Women’s U-17 World Cup, scheduled for October.
