LAHORE/ISLAMABAD: A step was taken in the right direction when an election commissioner was announced for the long due Pakistan Hockey Federation polls on Friday. However, the way it happened indicated the controversy surrounding the country’s national sport is far from its end.

Nasir Ali — member of the four-man committee appointed by the Pakistan Sports Board to run the PHF’s affairs after it de-notified president Khalid Sajjad Khokhar and secretary Asif Bajwa from their respected posts — named Mohammad Riaz as the federation’s election commissioner.

Riaz, an advisor of the Azad Jammu Kashmir government, who has served the PHF as the election commissioner before, was given the role again, but without the approval of the remaining three members of the PSB-appointed committee.

Former internationals Rehan Butt and Arshad Mehmood told Dawn that they were not consulted before Riaz’s name was finalised. However, Nasir has advised his fellow members to submit their objections over Riaz’s appointment in the next 48 hours.

The fourth member of the committee is Khokhar, who had been included by the PSB as a former PHF president. The election commissioner being announced without Khokhar’s consultation also implies that the PHF has given up its constitutional right to conduct its polls.

Despite being ripped off his powers as president, Khokhar appointed Haider Hussain as the PHF’s interim secretary on Wednesday.

PSB director general Asif Zaman is expected to take notice of the situation when he returns from Birmingham, England, where he had travelled to with the Pakistan contingent for the Commonwealth Games.

Meanwhile, the PHF elections are set to be held from August 5. The district level elections will be completed by August 13 before the provincial polls on August 17 and the national level elections on August 19, the federation said Friday.

All clubs which took part in the recently concluded Chief of Army Staff Inter-club Hockey Championship have been recognised as genuine clubs. Clubs that failed to feature in the tournament can acquire voting rights after being cleared by the PHF scrutiny committee.

LAWMAKERS BASH KHOKHAR

Meanwhile, in Islamabad, members of the National Assembly voiced their concerns over the continuing decline of hockey in Pakistan.

During the parliament’s question hour session on Friday, MNA Moulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali criticised Khokhar for not being fit enough to run the sport.

He said the PHF president is fighting bad health and uses a wheelchair and that the PHF’s matters “should be looked into”.

Akbar rued that nepotism had taken Pakistan hockey towards decline. The lawmaker’s views were echoed by his colleague Nawab Sher, who heads the NA’s standing committee on Inter Provincial Co-ordination.

Nawab said the committee had discussed the national team’s poor performance in its meetings and that it had given recommendations to send the PHF officials home.

 “The PHF president is on a wheelchair, he has no activity,” he told the house. He claimed that upon recommendations of the committee, the PHF was abolished, but in surprise to many, the committee was told that elections of federation are going to be conducted under the chairmanship of the removed PHF president.

Meanwhile, in a written reply to another question, federal minister IPC Ehsan-ur-Rehman Mazari, who is also in the UK with the national Commonwealth Games contingent, said that restricted availability of funds along with inappropriate use of the available funding by PHF had incurred financial losses to Pakistan hockey.

“Such funding may have been used in appropriate manner for domestic activation of hockey,” he added. 

“The PHF’s managements did not keep hockey up to their priorities resulting in poor governance and non-productivity.”

Earlier this month, Khokhar — along with secretary Bajwa and treasurer Ikhlaq Usmani — had been de-notified by the PSB after failing to hold elections of the country’s hockey governing body which were due in May this year. Khokhar had rejected PSB’s move.

“Please be informed that I am still the President PHF and not the former President according to the Constitution of PHF,” he said in a letter to the PSB, dated July 22.

“I, therefore, regret to accept your illegal, unlawful and unconstitutional letter.”

Khokhar too, is currently in the UK for the Commonwealth Games. 

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2022