Proposed regulatory body to affect federation's autonomy: Kalmadi

New Delhi, Aug 2 (UNI) Indian Olympic Association (IOA) today said the government's move to set up a regulatory body to supervise the functioning of the sports federations will effect the their autonomy and ''will violate the guidelines of the International Olympic Council (IOC)''.

''There are IOC rules which categorically say that sports bodies have to be autonomous and any move to take away that feature will go against those guidelines,'' asserted IOA chief Suresh Kalmadi Talking to media persons here Kalmadi made it clear that IOA will not accept any such regulatory body saying, ''They may say what they want but putting a government body over autonomous federations is not legally possible.'' The new sports policy draft prepared by the Union Sports Ministry proposes to create a regulatory mechanism to oversee the ministry, national sports federations and the IOA.

''This is not acceptable to us,'' Kalmadi said, adding, ''We have always stood for the autonomy of the sports bodies, we are governed by the IOC's rules and we wil not like those rules to be violated.'' UNI