NEW DELHI: The change in regime in the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), which is now headed by PT Usha with the country's football federation's chief Kalyan Chaubey as her deputy, has resulted in India's deputy chef-de-missions (CDMs) for the Asian Games in Hangzhou being dropped and replaced by officials of new dispensation's choice. Only wushu federation's head, Bhupendra Singh Bajwa, has been retained as the lead CDM.
In January last year, when IOA was run by veteran sports administrator Narinder Batra as its president with Rajeev Mehta as secretary general, the national Olympic committee had announced the names of Ajay Kumar Singhania (secretary general of the Badminton Association of India), Swapan Banerjee (president of the Bengal Olympic Association), Gurudatta Bhakta (secretary general of the Goa Olympic Association) and Hariom Kaushik (executive board member of the Netball Federation of India) as India's deputy CDMs for the Asian Games.
TOI has reliably learnt that the quartet of deputy CDMs have now been replaced by Ravinder Chaudhary (secretary general of the Athletics Federation of India), Dola Banerjee (Delhi CWG gold medallist in archery and IOA's Sportspersons of Outstanding Merit), MM Somaya (former hockey player and IOA's Sportspersons of Outstanding Merit) and Purukottam Ramachandran (former Indian sprinter who competed in the men's 4×400m relay at the 2000 Summer Olympics).
Bajwa, who was appointed by the IOA as head of two-member ad-hoc committee to run the day-to-day affairs of the now-suspended Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), has retained his position as the country's CDM for Hangzhou.
The list of IOA's contingent for Asiad as accessed by TOI also revealed that the name of London Olympics bronze medallist shooter Gagan Narang was originally recommended for one of the deputy CDMs post, but his candidature was later withdrawn to accommodate Banerjee.
The ministry has cleared a total of 14 IOA officials to accompany the Indian contingent to the Asiad, with physiotherapist Shirin Rai also performing her duties as 'female staff member' of the Indian soft tennis team.
"We have no role to play in the changing of names for the deputy CDMs. The ministry approved all 14 names as received from the IOA. We understand that four different deputy CDMs were named by the previous dispensation but the new regime forwarded these four names to us and the ministry simply approved them," said a ministry source.
