Legal bunkers in path of golf’s development
NEW DELHI: Out of an annual budget of around ~5.5crore, the Indian Golf Union (IGU) has spent close to ~1 crore (around 20 per cent of the budget) on court cases the past year-and-a-half.
Pending legal cases are the primary reason why golf’s national federation hasn’t been able to conduct elections as per sports ministry’s guidelines and led to it being derecognised.
The ministry has given IGU another lifeline by granting interim recognition till June 30, but the core issue behind IGU losing affiliation time and again is yet to be addressed.
In a recent internal mail, IGU director general, Maj Gen Bibhuti Bhushan (retd) wrote: “IGU has been in existence for the past 60 years and instrumental in promotion and development of amateur golf. However, the past two years have witnessed a steady decline in the reputation of IGU, which has now hit rock bottom.”
The reference was to IGU’S legal battle on multiple fronts and he continued, “We have spent almost ~1 crore and will continue to spend more on legal cases.”
IMPACT ON PLAYERS
As per IGU’S accounts of 2016 (books for 2017 and 2018 are yet to be audited), legal expenses and consultancy stood at just ~11 lakh, a far cry from present times. A major fallout of this soaring cost is that stipends to junior squads (boys and girls) have not been paid for the past few years. Also, the annual greenkeeping seminar, where an international expert was invited to share his expertise, has not been held after 2016. This impacts players as upkeep of courses isn’t as per latest standards.
Another figure that stands out is the expenditure of ~1.5 crore on salaries of IGU staff and office expenses. While the expenditure on junior and amateur development programmes stood at ~.22 crore and ~.5 lakh respectively, ~81 lakh was spent on sending teams abroad for tournaments and ~21 lakh on promotion of golf.
With time, these expenses would have gone up as well, but what needs to be highlighted is the money spent on legal cases could have been used for the