IGU elections postponed till further notice after resignation of Returning Officer

Ranvir Singh

New Delhi : The Indian Golf Union (IGU) elections, scheduled to be held on December 15, have been indefinitely postponed after the resignation of the Returning Officer (RO) – Justice O P Garg, former judge of the Allahabad High Court. There was a lot of chaos after Justice Garg reversed his order within 24 hours after suspending five State Golf Associations (SGAs) – Himachal Pradesh Proam Golf Association, Arunachal Pradesh Golf Association, Madhya Pradesh Golf Association, Nagaland Golf Association and Sikkim State Golf Association – on November 25 (Monday).

Despite being given enough time to respond to notices by the RO the above mentioned five SGAs didn’t produce the requisite documents. It was only after Justice Garg’s order Lt. Gen. Bhavnish Kumar, Brig. Atul Rajput, Col. Gaurav Verma accompanied by current IGU Secretary Harish Shetty approached him for reversal of his order. Justice Garg reversed his order without having the documents verified by IGU and without completing due diligence and scrutinising the documents and passed an order to reverse his decision.

This prima facie is a case of Army’s high-handedness trying to push Army-controlled SGAs. The Governing Council (GC) has arrived at a decision to indefinitely postpone the elections by majority vote and a committee will personally visit these five SGAs to gather the correct information before making any decision.

“Notice for the IGU elections were shared with 31 SGAs on November 14. The complainant Mr Shyam Sunder approached Justice Garg after a week having tried his best to contact these five SGAs in question. In fact, we couldn’t find the necessary documents required for being recognised as an SGA – Statement of Accounts, Minutes of the AGM, Election notifications and golf courses attached to it etc. So, when Justice Garg reversed his order within 24 hours I along with GC members asked him for the reasons to do so. We found that he was cornered by these senior Army officers and accepted their plea without scrutinising the documents. On arguing further, Justice Garg verbally tendered his resignation and repeatedly said that he will also send it by formal means of communication. Thereafter, we conducted a meeting with other GC members and came up with this resolution to postpone the elections till we get more clarity on these 5 SGAs,” IGU president Brijinder Singh said in a statement.