A meeting between two warring basketball groups has resulted in resolving their decade-long disputes.—File photo

LAHORE A meeting between two warring basketball groups on Monday has resulted in resolving their decade-long disputes while electing new office bearers for a Pakistan Basketball Federation (PBF) that's parallel to Nasim Butt's official one.

Monday's meeting, nevertheless, was attended by almost all the departments affiliated with the officially-recognised federation who expressed no confidence in Nasim Butt's body.

One group, headed by former secretary PBF Khalid Bashir, and another from Karachi, led by former Pakistan captain Rashid Ali Malik, announced the emergence amid the representatives of Army, Navy, Pakistan Air Force (PAF), Higher Education Commission (HEC) and Wapda, besides the provincial associations of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Federal Area.

Later, the same body elected Rashid Ali Malik as president and Khalid Bashir as general secretary of the new federation.

“We realise that our infighting was helping Nasim Butt stay in control of the federation but the game under his tenure suffered a lot to the extent that we were asked by all to end our differences with Khalid Bashir's group in order to be able to revamp the game in the country,” Rashid told reporters after the meeting.

“Prior to Nasim Butt's tenure, Pakistan's basketball team was the second top team in the South Asian region but in the last event held at Dhaka, we were second from the bottom.

The federation, too, has failed to hold a good number of tournaments in the last 10 years. Moreover, Pakistan has almost gone into isolation at the international level,” he pointed out.

Asked since no representative of the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) and the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) was present at the meeting, how will the elections that were held on Monday be recognised by the two organisations, Rashid said “We will meet the POA president and the PSB Director General Amir Hamza Gillani to apprise them about the no confidence move by all the PBF members against their office bearers. Even if they don't recognise us, we will continue to organise tournaments without using the federation's name as our first priority is to provide activities to the players.”

Asked how they intended to bring Pakistan team back to the international level, since it had been isolated, Khalid Bashir said “Just give us six month's time and you will see an abundance of activities both at the domestic and international level.”

Khalid also cleared that the elections were held according to the federation's existing constitution and hopefully both the POA and the PSB would accept its outcome as almost all members of the federation had joined them.

Asked if they were sure of their unity remaining intact, Rashid said that no one could guarantee anything about the future but they were making a fresh start with the best of intentions, something which they will continue to do in order to promote the game.

Rashid Butt, one of the representatives from Railways, said that his department had already expressed no confidence over the current PBF body by not participating in the last D.G. Rangers Cup, held as the national basketball championship in Lahore recently.

As Rangers is not an Army-affiliated unit, it could not take part in any national championship so Railways preferred to stay away from the event.

Almost all members at the meeting were annoyed with the attitude shown to them by Nasim Butt's body and so they endorsed the new body to be headed by Rashid A. Malik.

Meanwhile, Khalid Bashir announced the itinerary for four upcoming tournaments including the national championship, which will be held by Army in December. A prize money of Rs200,000 has also been announced for it.

The All-Pakistan Basketball Tournament in the third week of September, carrying a prize money of Rs200,000 will be contested by nine departmental teams.

Another to be hosted by the PAF with Rs100,000 prize money at stake is scheduled for October while the last one, the Kashmir Cup to be held in Karachi in November (prize money Rs200,000) are the other competitions.

It may be mentioned here that a wrong decision by the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) on January 15, 2000, paved the way for imposing ad hoc on the federation.

Both Rashid and Bashir were contesting the elections against each other in 2000 but a dispute forced both to announce their separate federations.

Later, D.G. Saulat Abbas called a joint meeting of both groups to conduct the elections under his supervision. As a result of the elections, both the groups obtained seven votes each in the 15-member house.

According to the constitution, in order to break the tie, the then president late Air Commodore Mohammad Afzal Khan was to cast the vote. But then the D.G. imposed ad hoc, appointing Nasim Butt as secretary. Later, Nasim was elected as secretary to continue till now.

The meeting was attended by Rashid Ali Malik, M. Shiraz (Sindh), Khalid Bashir, Dr Munawar (Punjab), Din Mohammad, Faqir Mohammad (KPK), Yawar Mahmood, Ahmad Nawaz (Balochistan), Imtiaz Butt (Islamabad), Col Shujaat (Army), Khalid Mahmood (Wapda), Irfan (HEC), Captain Farooq (PAF) and Rashid Butt (Railways).

The newly-elected body comprises Rashid Ali Malik (president), Col Rana Shujaat Ali (senior vice president), Farooq and Rashid Butt (vice presidents), Khalid Bashir (general secretary), Jamal Bagh and Abdul Nasir (associate secretaries), Imtiaz Butt (treasurer) and the executive committee with one representative from Navy, HEC, KPK and Balochistan.