Press Trust of India
Chandigarh, August 5: Shocking apathy and negligence by SAI authorities have led to the loss of a piece of Indian hockey and the officials have no clue about the priceless memorabilia donated way back in 1985 by legendary Olympian Balbir Singh (Sr).
The donated items, meant for a proposed museum which never came about, included an Olympic blazer, medals and rare pictures. Among them were Balbir’s Melbourne Olympic blazer, 36 medals including the Tokyo Asiad (1958) silver, and over 100 rare photographs. Balbir (Sr) was a member of the team which won hockey gold in London (1948), Helsinki (1952) and Melbourne (1956) Olympics.
The 91-year-old triple Olympic gold medallist still maintains that in 1985, he had donated his medals and memorabilia to the then SAI secretary on being told that they would be displayed in a show window at the then proposed National Sports Museum.
But an enquiry about the items before the 2012 London Olympics at the request of The Olympic Museum revealed that SAI officials were clueless about their whereabouts. Nearly a year back, Union sports minister Sarbananda Sonowal had visited Balbir (Sr) at his residence here and SAI officials, while claiming ignorance about the entire matter, had promised a thorough enquiry.
In the meanwhile, a group of lawyers from the Punjab and Haryana High Court carried out RTI campaigns in the SAI offices of SAI in New Delhi and the National Institute of Sports (NIS), Patiala, which revealed some astonishing facts.
The RTI replies of these authorities revealed shocking mismatch of statements, but more importantly, also an affirmation of the fact that the articles were indeed received by these authorities from Balbir (Sr).
According to Balbir’s maternal grandson, Kabir Bhomia, the IOC’s museum committee wanted the Melbourne Games blazer to be a part of the official London Olympics exhibition where he was the only Indian and only hockey player chosen among 16 icons across all participants in all disciplines in 116 years of the modern Olympics era.
“That is when we contacted SAI to get that blazer as Nanaji (Balbir Sr.) had nothing with him in London apart from Olympic medals. But SAI officials said that they didn’t know about the whereabouts of the treasure,” Kabir said.