Our Submission on the National Sports Governance Bill, 2024: The Reforms India's Sport Urgently Needs

India's sporting landscape is littered with disputes that should never have reached a court of law. Selection controversies where national federations devised opaque criteria and athletes had no recourse. Governance failures where the same individuals served on executive committees for decades without accountability. Age eligibility rules that differed inexplicably between national and international federations, producing absurd outcomes for young athletes.

The National Sports Governance Bill, 2024 — to which AM Sports Law submitted formal comments on November 10, 2024 — is the most significant legislative attempt to address these structural failures since the National Sports Development Code of 2011. The Bill targets transparency, accountability, and integrity within the National Olympic Committee, National Paralympic Committee, National Sports Federations, and Regional Sports Federations. It deserves to succeed. These are our recommendations to help it do so.

Clarity on the Relationship with the Sports Development Code

The most fundamental issue is the Bill's relationship with the existing National Sports Development Code, 2011. Both instruments address overlapping governance issues — eligibility criteria, term limits, conflict of interest, election procedures. Without explicit clarity on which supersedes the other in the event of conflict, practitioners and federations will face genuine legal uncertainty. The Bill must state clearly that it supersedes the Code in all areas of overlap, and must set out a transition period for federation constitutions to be updated accordingly.

Eligibility, Term Limits, and Age Caps

One of sport's most persistent governance failures is the entrenchment of administrators who hold positions indefinitely, often with deep conflicts of interest between their roles as federation officials and as individuals with commercial interests in the sport. The Bill must set minimum experience requirements for candidates standing for executive committee elections — drawing from the good practice of federations like AIFF, which requires prior service in affiliated bodies. It must also impose an absolute cap on the number of terms any individual may serve.

Selection Rules and Alignment with International Federations

The most frequent source of athlete-NSF litigation is selection. Federations routinely devise selection criteria that are neither transparent nor aligned with their international federation counterparts, producing outcomes that damage athlete careers and India's international standing. One example: the Table Tennis Federation of India calculates age eligibility on January 1st of each year, while the International Table Tennis Federation uses December 31st. A player eligible for ITTF under-15 competitions may be ineligible for TTFI under-15 competitions in the same year — for no reason other than administrative inconsistency.

The Bill must mandate that NSF rules align with the relevant International Federation's eligibility criteria, and that selection criteria for major events are published well in advance — not announced after the fact. Transparency in selection is not a courtesy to athletes. It is a governance requirement.

Conflict of Interest

A serving NSF official who is simultaneously an agent, sponsor, or commercial beneficiary in relation to the sport they govern has an obvious conflict of interest. The Bill addresses this in principle but the provisions need sharper teeth: mandatory disclosure, cooling-off periods, and a clear enforcement body with the authority to act on violations.

Athlete Welfare and Representation

No governance framework is complete without meaningful athlete representation. Athletes must have a defined voice — not advisory and not ceremonial — in the governance structures of the federations that make decisions about their careers, selection, and welfare. The Bill should mandate athlete commissions within NSFs with substantive representational rights, modelled on the IOC Athletes' Commission framework.

Conclusion

A governance framework is only as good as its enforcement. The Bill's success depends not just on the quality of its provisions but on the establishment of a credible, independent oversight body with the power and resources to enforce them. India has produced good policy documents on sports governance before. What has historically been missing is the institutional will to implement them. The Bill is an opportunity to change that. We hope the Ministry uses it.