NEW DELHI: Former
CEC
Shahabuddin
Yaqoob Quraishi
, apart from his bureaucratic skills to deal with politicians and political parties of different hues, appears to have blossomed into a rare talent in administering myriad sports bodies, from equestrian to football to hockey.
A 1971 batch IAS officer from Haryana, Quraishi retired as CEC in 2012. In November 2017, the
Supreme Court
appointed him and former India captain Bhaskar Ganguly as Observers in All India Football Federation with the mandate to draft its new constitution in eight weeks. Quraishi filed the draft constitution before the SC in 2020 with an application for condoning the delay.
In May 2022, the SC appointed Quraishi and Ganguly along with Justice A R Dave as Committee of Administrator for FIFA ousting Praful Patel-led Committee, whose tenure had come to an end two years ago. The CoA appointment resulted in FIFA suspending AIFF. The SC on Monday ended the engagement of CoA and modified its earlier orders to facilitate holding of U-17 FIFA Women World Cup in India.
In May this year, the Delhi HC had appointed Justice Dave with Quraishi as CoA for Hockey India with remunerations of Rs 5 lakh per month each. On August 16, the HC had appointed Justice Dave and Quraishi as CoA for Indian Olympic Association along with Abhinav Bindra. The SC had ordered status quo as the Centre feared that the IOA may go AIFF’s way and face suspension from the International Olympic Committee.
And there is a thin-line between elections and equestrian as Quraishi was tasked with the assignment of ‘Observer’ by the Delhi HC in November 2019 for Equestrian Federation of India. He was allowed to dras Rs 50,000 per meeting of Executive Committee and Rs 1 lakh per AGM. So far, eight EC meetings and two AGMs have taken place.
Other sports bodies which are supervised by retired judges, appointed by Delhi HC, are – TT Federation of India (Justice Geeta Mittal, since February 2022), Amateur Kabaddi Federation (Justice S P Garg, since September 2018), Taekwondo Federation (Justice G S Sistani, since April 2022) and Judo Federation (Justice Pankaj Nakvi, since June 2022).
