Sports law complicates India 2036 plan

India's path towards a potential bid for the 2036 Olympic Games was built on grand declarations. In 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the ambition as "an ancient dream of 140 million people", blending sporting aspiration, national pride and the leadership of the Global South.

At the same time, Ahmedabad took a decisive step with its confirmation as host of the 2030 Commonwealth Games, conceived as an international showcase and a laboratory for multisport organisation in a densely populated country marked by infrastructure deficits and deep social and cultural inequalities.

Against that backdrop, the legal framework began to move in a far less symbolic direction. The National Sports Governance Act, adopted in 2025, is presented as an effort to modernise sports administration by giving legal force to the old Sports Code and creating structures such as the National Sports Board and the National Sports Tribunal, with powers over recognition, internal rules and dispute resolution.

In early January, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports notified the National Sports Governance (National Sports Bodies) Rules, 2026, which begin to give operational substance to that architecture. They set the composition of governing bodies, introduce minimum quotas for 'sportspersons of outstanding merit' and for women on boards, regulate electoral processes and give federations six months to adapt their statutes. The official aim is to provide greater transparency, representation and consistency.

Ahmedabad will host the 2030 Commonwealth Games. X @gujarat_plus_

In parallel, the Ministry decided to suspend national federation elections until December 2026, allowing current office-holders to remain in place during the statutory transition. The measure affects major actors such as the cricket federation, the dominant sport in India, as well as football and badminton, and is justified as a 'technical window' to reorganise rules and membership rolls before returning to the polls.

Taken together, however, these moves paint a scenario far removed from an autonomous ecosystem. The core criticism is not the existence of a general law, but how power is distributed within it. The NSGA allows the central Government to establish a National Sports Board with members appointed by the Executive and authorises it to issue binding directions 'for the efficient administration' of the system, including the power to suspend or cancel the recognition of any federation that fails to comply with the new standards.

For any country this would already be a grey zone; for India, with its recent history, it is especially sensitive. The Olympic Charter requires national Olympic committees to preserve their autonomy and 'resist all pressures' of a political or legal nature that may interfere with their ability to fulfil their obligations.

PT Usha meets IOC officials at the Olympic House in Lausanne. X @PTUshaOfficial

It is also significant that the International Olympic Committee has sanctioned India before for crossing that line. In 2012 it suspended the Indian Olympic Association over Government interference in its electoral process, forcing athletes to compete under the Olympic flag until new elections, supervised in 2014, lifted the sanction. 

This memory turns what might sound like a theoretical debate on 'good governance' into a concrete risk. A recent analysis by LiveLaw warns that the NSGA faces a double threat: projecting to Lausanne the image of a 'bureaucratic capture' incompatible with Olympic autonomy, and creating a domestic sports justice system so slow and mandatory that it may, in practice, arrive too late for athletes' careers.

This second point is where criticism focuses most. The law requires disputes to pass first through internal mechanisms before reaching the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland. In theory, the international route remains open; in practice, time may become a silent sanction. Jurisprudence from the CAS and from regional courts such as the Court of Justice of the European Union has already stressed that sporting careers are short and that a legal battle lasting three or four years can amount to a de facto exclusion from elite competition.

Harmanpreet Singh and Team India team after Paris 2024. GETTY IMAGES

India has experienced this first-hand. The case of swimmer Amar Muralidharan, resolved in 2015, is frequently cited: his disciplinary proceedings took so long in the domestic system that, by the time his file reached Lausanne, his suspension period had already expired. The CAS corrected procedural flaws but could not return his lost seasons.

While that legal debate intensifies, the political narrative moves in a different direction, pushing for more ambition, more events and a rhetoric of national achievement. The construction of the project relies on messages aimed at projecting institutional strength. This tension is beginning to shape India's sports-policy landscape.

In this context, Home Minister Amit Shah once again presented the plan as part of an identity-driven narrative, asserting that India's culture "cannot be erased". He also praised the way Ahmedabad is positioning itself as a 'sports hub', prepared to welcome athletes from several continents at the 2030 Commonwealth Games and, if the plan progresses, at the 2036 Olympic Games.

This contrast lies at the heart of the tension: internally, a law that strengthens the State's role in overseeing federations, extends current mandates and shapes appeal routes; externally, a promise to lead the Global South in sports governance and present itself as a model of modernisation.

India's Home Affairs and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah. GETTY IMAGES

The risk, as LiveLaw emphasises, is that such modernisation may be 'stillborn' if Lausanne interprets the new framework as a form of political control incompatible with the Olympic spirit. There is still room for adjustment. The Government can revise appointment mechanisms for the Board and the Tribunal, limit the most intrusive powers over the Olympic Committee and ensure that the new bodies operate as fast and technical instances, not as an obligatory maze before reaching the CAS. This is where the credibility of the system is at stake. 

However, the window is narrow. As the 2026 Rules take hold, as federations adapt their statutes and as elections are pushed to late 2026, the institutional architecture begins to settle. The further these processes advance, the harder it will be to correct course.

If India wants Ahmedabad 2030 to be a stepping stone towards 2036 rather than a ceiling, the key will no longer lie only in building venues or multiplying speeches, but in convincing the Olympic Movement that its reform respects autonomy, genuinely protects athletes and avoids repeating the errors that triggered the 2012 suspension. The paradox is that the same law designed as the foundation of that dream may become the stone that makes it stumble.

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