The Soft Target? Hockey India’s Selective Accountability
Hockey India has stripped its appointed Director General of his powers over a saffron World Cup kit, on eight charges nobody has tested. Its elected Secretary General, held in contempt by the Delhi High Court and under an independent inquiry into allegations he calls baseless, remains in office.
Hockey India’s president, Dilip Tirkey, sent a legal notice through his lawyer on Saturday to the federation’s Director General, Cdr RK Srivastava (Retd). “With immediate effect all your powers as the Director General of HI cease,” it said, according to PTI. Srivastava may not act for the federation “pending further decision in accordance with the HI Bye-Laws”, and must hand over records, files, access credentials, assets and pending matters to whoever the president’s office names in writing. The notice lists eight charges. The first is the saffron kit India wore at last month’s World Cup.
He has four weeks to reply. The notice says it “does not constitute a final determination of any charge or final disciplinary punishment”, Madhyamam reported, and Navbharat Live reported that his contracted salary and service benefits are unaffected. It suspends his authority pending a decision; it does not dismiss him. PTI could not reach Srivastava for comment.
The same federation has a Secretary General, Bhola Nath Singh, whom the Delhi High Court held guilty of civil contempt on 20 April for “conscious, concerted, deliberate and willful disobedience” of its orders. Since 9 September he has also been the subject of an independent inquiry, constituted by the Indian Olympic Association on the Sports Ministry’s direction, into allegations by the former India captain Asunta Lakra that he threatened her after she raised complaints of sexual harassment against a coach in Jharkhand. He denies them. He was at the World Cup too. No move to have him step aside has been reported. One official faces untested charges and lost his powers in a single letter; the other carries a court finding and is in office. The question is not whether Srivastava has a case to answer. It is what standard Hockey India applies, and to whom.
Eight charges, none tested
The notice, as Madhyamam and IANS reported it on 13 September, reads like the ledger of a working relationship that had broken down well before the World Cup. Beyond the jersey, it says Srivastava travelled to the tournament in the Netherlands and Belgium after being told to stay in India for Hockey India League work, a direction Navbharat Live reports was repeated in an email on 30 July. It says the disciplinary process against the federation’s contracted PR agency was not fully carried through, that directions on a disciplinary matter from India’s December tour of South Africa had to be repeated, and that internal complaints committee records were not produced. It accuses him of not fully placing dealings with the FIH, the Asian Hockey Federation and national federations before the president and the elected body. IANS quotes it calling his non-compliance “a direct insult to, and disobedience of, the office of the President”.
| No. | Charge | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The jerseyBlue to saffron without prior consultation with the President or Executive Committee; no approving resolution produced | Alleged |
| 2 | World Cup travelWent to the Netherlands and Belgium despite directions to stay for Hockey India League work | Alleged |
| 3 | The PR agencyDisciplinary and contractual process after a 31 July media embargo not fully implemented | Alleged |
| 4 | South Africa tourDirections on disciplinary action over a December tour incident had to be repeated, 30 January and 3 February | Alleged |
| 5 | The head coachNo clear statement obtained from chief coach Craig Fulton on reports about a player’s omission | Alleged |
| 6 | Complaints recordsInternal complaints (POSH) committee records on allegations against an individual unavailable despite requests since 15 July | Alleged |
| 7 | An umpiring matterConcerning a development umpire; no detail reported | Alleged |
| 8 | External communicationsDealings with the FIH, AHF and national federations not fully placed before the President and elected body | Alleged |
Some of those would be serious if established. A federation cannot run if its chief executive ignores its president’s lawful directions. None of them has been tested. The notice is the president’s account, sent by his lawyer, and the man it accuses has not yet given his.
The colour question
The jersey is the charge that made the news, and the one where the notice is hardest to square with what Hockey India’s own officers have said in public.
Hockey India posted the saffron kit on X on 27 July. Its explanation was that the blue uniform “tended to blend/merge with the blue synthetic playing surface”. Former captains, among them Viren Rasquinha, Ajit Pal Singh and Dhanraj Pillay, objected. On 30 July Naveen Patnaik, the former Odisha chief minister whose government made the state the national teams’ sponsor in 2018, wrote that he was “given to understand that this step was taken under pressure from the BJP Government in Odisha” and called it “petty politics of the worst kind”. ISJ found no response from the Odisha government or the BJP.
Tirkey first defended the change in public. On 30 July, IANS reported, he said it had been suggested by the players and support staff, and that “when the team plays on blue turf, the blue jersey creates visibility-related issues”. His email to the Executive Board the next day said the change “appears to have been taken and implemented without being placed before the Executive Board for discussion and without my prior knowledge”. “My concern is not the choice of saffron itself,” he wrote, according to Deccan Herald, which also reported his line that he had been asked by the Government of Odisha for a clarification. He told Srivastava to set out who had authorised it. PTI reported on 5 August that Srivastava had let a 5pm deadline pass without giving one.
Singh’s account was different. “The decision to change the colour was circulated in our internal group, so all officials should be aware of it,” he said, as quoted by South First. “There was no outside pressure on us from anywhere to make the colour change.” On the day the deadline lapsed, he asked Tirkey to call an emergency board meeting.
So the federation’s two senior elected officers disagree on the record about who knew. The president says he did not, though he had defended the change in public the day before; the Secretary General says everyone should have. The notice charges the Director General with implementing and launching the kit without consultation. It does not say who decided on it, and nobody has shown that he decided alone. Executing a decision and ordering it are different charges. Only one is on the notice.
India played the World Cup, 15 to 30 August, in saffron. The men finished eighth of 16, the women fifth. On 8 September Tirkey said both teams would wear blue at the Asian Games, which open on 19 September. “Saffron is not the permanent colour,” he said. Four days later came the notice.
Guilty, on record
Singh’s court case began with a different petition. Syeed Asima Ali, Hockey India’s elected vice-president, went to the Delhi High Court seeking his removal, arguing that he is ineligible to hold office under the tenure and age limits of the National Sports Code, according to Law Trend. On 17 January 2025 the court directed Hockey India to give her the links to take part in every Executive Board meeting. She was kept out of two, on 4 July and 27 July 2025.
Hockey India’s defence was that she had lost her standing: her parent club, Young Khalsa Sports Club of Srinagar, had been de-affiliated from Hockey Jammu & Kashmir, which told the federation on 3 July 2025 that she was no longer its representative, according to FoxMandal’s summary of the judgment. Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav rejected it. A party that believes later events justify changing a court’s order, he held, must go back to the court and ask, and the respondents had not sought a modification. On 20 April he held Hockey India and its Secretary General guilty of civil contempt, naming Singh specifically for “conscious, concerted, deliberate and willful disobedience”. Non-compliance by a state-funded national sports federation, the court said, was “no less than an administrative sin”. It noted that his affidavit of apology came roughly 250 days after the petition was filed, and found his oral apology “woefully inadequate”.
Sentence was listed for 4 May, with Singh given liberty to purge the contempt. ISJ has not been able to find a reported outcome of that hearing. The finding stands, and Singh is still Secretary General.
On its face this is a governance offence: a federation officer kept an elected colleague out of board meetings after a court had told the federation to let her in. Its weight comes from who the colleague is. She is the officer asking the same court to unseat him.
The inquiry
Lakra, who sits on Hockey India’s Executive Board and its selection committee, says Singh phoned her on 9 May and told her to “stay within your limits”, she told ANI, after she raised the handling of complaints against a Jharkhand coach, Sudhir Golla. To The Tribune she said he “told me to ‘behave’”. Two days later Jharkhand’s sports department removed Golla from the Eklavya hockey training centre in Ranchi, in an order that cited his absence from training duties without approval and inappropriate behaviour with female trainees, and Hockey India then relieved him from the under-18 boys’ national camp in Bhopal. A written complaint signed by 31 current and former players, reported by Sportstar, alleged sexual harassment and casteist slurs, and support for him from officials in Hockey Jharkhand. ISJ found no response from Golla in the reports it checked.
Singh called Lakra’s allegations “baseless and part of a conspiracy”, IANS reported. “I have never behaved in that manner with anyone,” he told The Tribune.
It was Tirkey who asked the Sports Ministry for an inquiry “comprising persons not connected with Hockey India”, warning that the federation’s own internal committee “may give rise to concerns regarding impartiality”, PTI reported. The ministry directed the IOA to form a neutral panel on 16 July. The IOA constituted one on 9 September: the retired High Court judge Deepa Sharma in the chair, with the former athlete Vandana Rao, the former India captain Mamta Kharb and the lawyer Sitwat Nabi. IOA president PT Usha’s letter asks Hockey India for “full cooperation” and makes it pay the panel’s costs.
In the meantime Hockey India’s ethics committee has opened proceedings against Lakra, on a complaint by the young Jharkhand player Albela Rani Toppo, who alleges Lakra tried to intimidate her and threatened to end her career. Lakra calls it “continued intimidation and retaliation”. There is an older file as well. In November 2023 Saral Talwar, president of Telangana Hockey, accused Singh of demanding ₹25 lakh to let the state unit hold its elections. “If you want to get out of it, you have to pay Rs 25 (lakh),” he told PTI. Singh denied it. ISJ found no reported outcome.
Who was in Belgium
The travel charge sits awkwardly beside the record of who else was there. The notice, as IANS and Madhyamam reported it, says Tirkey had approved the selector Subhadra Pradhan and the age-group coaches Rani Rampal and Sardar Singh to travel, and accuses Srivastava of choosing himself “over and above the persons mentioned”. That is a charge of disobeying the president, not of travelling, and it may be answerable either way.
Singh was at the same tournament, and nothing reported suggests anyone questioned it. Hockey India’s own account on X reported that the Secretary General and the Director General held discussions on the federation’s behalf with Great Britain Hockey, the Russian Field Hockey Federation and Hockey New Zealand on the sidelines of the World Cup. The federation’s channel presented the trip as official business. Its president now charges one of the two men with making it. ISJ’s carousel also placed the chairman of selectors, RP Singh, in Belgium; ISJ has not been able to confirm that in published reports.
Two standards
Cdr RK Srivastava (Retd)
Director General · appointed
Show-cause charges
Eight, set out by the president through his lawyer. None tested. Reply due in four weeks.
Action: all powers ceased, 12 September, pending a decision under the bye-laws.
Bhola Nath Singh
Secretary General · elected
Court finding
Civil contempt, Delhi High Court, 20 April 2026. No reported sentence.
Under inquiry
Lakra’s allegations, IOA panel since 9 September. He denies them.
Allegation, denied
Talwar, November 2023. No reported outcome.
Action: none reported.
The difference in treatment has a structural explanation. A Director General is appointed, and a president can suspend his authority with a letter. A Secretary General is elected, and is not removed by a president’s letter; the route to unseating Singh already runs through the Delhi High Court, in Ali’s petition. Waiting for the court, though, is a choice. No request for Singh to step back while the IOA panel works has been reported, nor any board resolution on the contempt. Tirkey acted by letter, in Hockey India’s name, on charges he could bring alone. On the finding a judge made five months ago, neither he nor the board has done anything that has been reported.
None of this makes Srivastava blameless, and none of it makes Singh guilty of anything beyond contempt. It does show that the notice is also a move in a larger contest. Tirkey and Singh have been at odds since the jersey row. Singh has now called the 119th, emergent, Executive Board meeting for 18 September, his email saying it was convened “on the advice/direction” of the president. Its agenda includes Hockey India League restructuring, the election timetable and an item to “place on record the legal notice dated 12.09.2026 and the contents thereof”.
The teams fly to Japan in blue. Srivastava’s reply is due by the second week of October; the IOA panel has no published deadline; the contempt sentence has not been reported. By the time any of them lands, the jersey will already have been changed back. The court finding will still be on the record, and the man it names will still be Secretary General.
The 18 September meeting went ahead. Tirkey said it “did not have his sanction” and was therefore illegal, PTI reported on 25 September; its agenda included the Director General’s notice, the Hockey India League and the Asian Champions Trophy venues. The same report said Tirkey had filed a Delhi Police complaint against Srivastava and three others, among them the federation’s finance manager, alleging criminal breach of trust, theft, endangerment of life and wrongful abandonment over a federation car provided to him in Delhi on 22 September which, PTI’s sources said, was recalled with his belongings and medicines inside. Police confirmed receipt but had registered no FIR. The allegations are unproven, and PTI reported no response from those named. Singh, speaking to PTI from Nagoya, where he was attending the Asian Games, said the federation’s elections would be held on 7 November.
In blue, India’s women beat China 1-0 on 2 October for their first Asian Games hockey gold since 1982, and the men beat Malaysia 5-1 on 3 October to keep theirs; both titles carry places at Los Angeles 2028. On 16 October OdishaBytes reported that the Delhi High Court had disposed of a petition by Tirkey challenging the election process, directing his grievances to Hockey India’s internal mechanism, with former Supreme Court judge AK Sikri set to head the grievance committee.
As of 29 October ISJ has found no published reply from Srivastava, no report from the IOA panel and no reported sentence in the contempt case.
Sourcing. The notice: PTI via ThePrint (12 September), IANS via Orissa Post and The Hans India, Madhyamam and Navbharat Live (13 September), PTI via Orissa Post, and Outlook citing The Times of India (15 September, the board meeting). The jersey: Hockey India’s statement and Singh’s and Patnaik’s words via South First (31 July); Patnaik via ANI in The Tribune (30 July); Tirkey’s public defence via IANS in The Hans India (30 July); Tirkey’s letter via Deccan Herald and LatestLY (31 July); PTI via The Bridge (5 August, 8 September). Contempt: the Delhi High Court’s judgment of 20 April 2026, and The Bridge (21 April), Law Trend (21 April), LiveLaw (22 April) and FoxMandal (18 May) on Syeed Asima Ali v. Hockey India & Ors., CONT.CAS(C) 1119/2025. Inquiry: The Tribune (9 July), IANS (10 July), Sportstar via The Bridge (10 July), ANI via Asianet Newsable and WION (11 and 16 July), The Bridge (16 May, on Golla’s removal), PTI via Outlook (17 July) and via ThePrint and The Bridge (9 September). Talwar: The Bridge (26 November 2023). World Cup placings: IANS (31 August) and ISJ’s World Cup reporting. Travel: the notice as reported, and a Hockey India post on X. Since publication: PTI via ThePrint (25 September), Organiser, Onmanorama and The Week (2–3 October), PTI via The Bridge and IANS via The Hans India (2–4 October), OdishaBytes (16 October). ISJ’s September research for the carousel supplied the leads.
Corrections to the carousel. Slide 1: “a live harassment inquiry” — the IOA inquiry is into Lakra’s allegation that Singh threatened her after she raised harassment complaints against a coach; Singh is not accused of harassment, and he denies the threat. “Still runs the federation” — he remains Secretary General; the president is Tirkey. Slide 3: “No disciplinary process against a contracted PR agency” — the notice says the process was not fully implemented, per Madhyamam. Slide 4: “The men finish seventh” — eighth of 16, per IANS (31 August) and ISJ’s World Cup reporting. Slide 4: “Hockey India has not rebutted it on record” — Secretary General Bhola Nath Singh said “There was no outside pressure on us from anywhere to make the colour change”, per South First (31 July). Slide 4: “Former players call it saffronisation” — former captains objected, but in the reports checked the word is used by commentators and political critics, not attributed to a former player, and the criticism came in late July, before the tournament. Slide 5: presents the contempt finding as Singh’s alone — Hockey India was also held guilty, with Singh named specifically, per LiveLaw and FoxMandal. Slide 6: “threatened her with ‘consequences’” — not found as Lakra’s words; the word appears in a Tribune headline, and her reported words are “stay within your limits” (ANI) and that he told her to “behave” (The Tribune). Slide 6: “a Ranchi academy” — the Eklavya hockey training centre, a Jharkhand sports department centre in Ranchi, per The Bridge and The Tribune. Slide 6: “Golla denies them too” — no denial by Golla found in any report checked; left out. Slide 6: “Earlier” — the Talwar allegation dates to November 2023, per The Bridge (26 November 2023). Slide 7: “Three officials travelled” and “Dilip Tirkey · Did not travel” — Singh’s and Srivastava’s presence is confirmed (Hockey India on X; the notice); RP Singh’s presence and Tirkey’s absence were not found in published reports. Slide 8: “Who gets removed” — see slide 9; the “What” line under Srivastava states the notice’s charges as fact, and they are allegations. Slide 8: “Judged by … The Sports Ministry. The IOA.” — neither has judged anything; the ministry directed and the IOA constituted an inquiry that has not reported. Slide 8: “a whistleblower on child sexual harassment” — the reports describe girls, female trainees and players; none checked establishes that the complainants were minors, so the article says sexual harassment. Slide 9: “A Director General can be removed by a lawyer’s letter” — the letter suspended his powers pending a decision; slide 2 itself says it is not a sacking.
Flag. The outcome of the 4 May 2026 sentencing hearing on the contempt finding was not found in any source, as of 29 October. Singh’s presence at the World Cup rests on a Hockey India post on X seen in search results; the post itself could not be opened. Lakra’s words differ by outlet: “stay within your limits” (ANI) and “behave” (The Tribune), and The Tribune attributes “stay within our limits” to a players’ letter of 29 June. The coach’s name is spelled Golla by PTI, The Tribune and The Bridge, and Gola by ANI and IANS. Madhyamam lists eight specific charges; the IANS list differs (a separate Hockey India League franchise item and a general charge of “dereliction of duty or wilful disobedience”); the ledger follows Madhyamam, and the umpiring and complaints-records items are left unnamed because they concern people outside this story. Tirkey’s public defence of the change on 30 July, a day before his email, first seen in LatestLY, is confirmed by IANS in The Hans India and is now used. Outlook and The CSR Journal (15 September) describe an allegation about leaked Hockey India records as part of the notice; it is not among Madhyamam’s eight and is left out. The status of Ali’s underlying removal petition is not established. PTI’s 25 September report calls Srivastava a “former HI Executive Director”, and OdishaPlus (28 September, single source, undated) reports him alongside Singh in Chandigarh at the men’s Asian Champions Trophy announcement; his standing since the notice is unclear. The Delhi High Court order on Tirkey’s petition is single-sourced (OdishaBytes), with no judge named and the date inferred. The men’s Asian Games final score rests on Organiser and OdishaBytes; one Khel Now page gave a conflicting account and was not used.
Photographs. Slide 4 prints a placeholder where its photo credit should be; no other slide carries a credit. The carousel’s cover is a designed composite rather than a photograph and is not reproduced here. It and slides 6 and 8, which carry the claims corrected above, are left out of the gallery below.
