National Sports Governance Act 2025: From Ad-Hoc Oversight to Statutory Reform in Indian Sports

Policy Update
Sandra Menon

Introduction

For years, Indian sport operated on an unwritten principle: no matter how messy a federation’s internal politics became, courts and ad hoc committees would eventually sort it out. That informal arrangement came to an end in August 2022 when FIFA suspended the All India Football Federation, citing undue influence from a Supreme Court-appointed committee overseeing its affairs. This temporary but unprecedented suspension threatened India’s hosting of the FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup just days before kick-off.

India’s answer to this perennial embarrassment is the National Sports Governance Act, 2025. Passed by Parliament in August 2025 and assented to by President Droupadi Murmu on 18 August, it replaces a decade of non-binding guidelines with India’s first statutory framework for how sports federations must be run, elected, funded and held accountable, including, for the first time, formal legal oversight extending to the Board of Control for Cricket in India. The timing is no coincidence either, as credible governance at home is rapidly becoming a prerequisite for credibility abroad, with India also eyeing a bid to host the 2036 Summer Olympics.

Background

Prior to this Act, the Indian sports federations were governed by the National Sports Development Code of India, 2011, a set of administrative instructions issued by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, not a law enacted by Parliament. The Code laid down age limits, tenure caps, and election norms for federation office-bearers but had no real teeth; a federation that ignored it faced at most withdrawal of government recognition, not any binding legal consequence. This was already flagged as a result in a 2014 Parliamentary Standing Committee report, which found that most of the federations were dominated by non-sports persons with recurring complaints of misgovernance, wrongful selection, and opaque elections.

In the years that followed, the consequences of that toothlessness could not be ignored. Praful Patel held three terms and 12 years as All India Football Federation president, the maximum allowed under the Code, but no fresh elections were held in December 2020. Eventually the Supreme Court stepped in and appointed a Committee of Administrators to manage the day-to-day affairs of the federation. In August 2022, FIFA suspended India on the grounds that court-appointed oversight amounted to prohibited third-party interference under its own statutes.

The suspension, lasting eleven days from 16 to 27 August 2022, was a rare and reputationally costly episode, with the Indian Olympic Association also facing a parallel warning from the International Olympic Committee around the same time over delayed elections of its own.

Cricket brought its pressures. With T20 cricket set to return to the Olympic program at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, the Board of Control for Cricket in India could no longer reasonably remain outside a formal national sports structure while competing in the Olympics. Against this backdrop, and with India aiming to host the 2036 Summer Olympics, the government introduced the National Sports Governance Bill in the Lok Sabha on 23 July 2025.

Table 1: National Sports Governance Act, 2025 at a Glance

Source: Parliament of India; Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports; PRS Legislative Research.

Functioning

The design of the Act is based on three new institutions on top of the existing federation structure. Where this differs from the old code is that compliance is no longer in practice optional. National Sports Bodies like National Sports Federations, the National Olympic Committee and the National Paralympic Committee must now re-shape their internal governance to meet the standards of the Act, or risk losing recognition altogether, and recognition is what allows a federation to send athletes to international events, access government funding, and use its name and insignia.

In other words, the Act ties good governance to a federation’s ability to operate at all, something the 2011 Code could never enforce. Table 2 provides more detail on these institutional requirements.

Table 2: Institutional Architecture under the Act

Source: National Sports Governance Act, 2025; Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports; Lexology legal analysis.

Office-bearers now face rules that the old code did not have the power to enforce: a maximum age of 70, which can be extended to 75 only if the international federation’s own rules allow it. There is also a limit of three terms, which equals twelve years in total. Executive committees can have no more than 15 members. Recognized groups must also register under the Right to Information Act, 2005. However, this is only required if they get government money. This condition, which is explained in parts of the document, turns out to be more important than it seems at first.

Perhaps the important decision is about who has the power to make the final call. The cases that the Tribunal can handle are clearly not allowed in Indian courts, and the only place where its decisions can be challenged is the Supreme Court within thirty days. If the international federation has its own way to appeal, that might be an option too. The idea is simple: stop the delays that have made groups, like the AIFF and the IOA, stuck in court for years. Give them one place to settle their problems by sending them to different high courts.

Performance

Nearly a year passed between the Act receiving presidential assent and its central institutions actually becoming operational, and that gap is itself worth tracking as a performance indicator.

Table 3: Rollout Timeline

Source: Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports notifications; DD News; PIB.

The sequencing matters. Some provisions of the Act and guidelines for appointment of National Sports Board members came into force on 31 December 2025. The Board and the Tribunal did not have any operational rules until the announcement of the National Sports Governance (National Sports Board) Rules, 2026, and the National Sports Governance (National Sports Tribunal) Rules, 2026, in May 2026.

Consequently, the two bodies intended to exercise the powers of the Act, viz. to recognise federations and to settle disputes, only became functional around nine months after the law was officially notified. The Tribunal Rules have created a space for complaints to be filed, documents to be uploaded and virtual hearings to take place and this is a huge departure from the previous judicial process. 

Impact

The Act was anticipated to bring about a quicker, more reliable resolution to sports disputes and a greater separation between federations and the courts, ending years of litigation in a dedicated forum that would offer a one-stop solution. What we have seen so far falls below that expectation for one reason: The National Sports Board and Tribunal received their rules of operation only in May 2026 so that neither institution has completed even a full cycle.

No effort has ever been made to seek federation recognition from start to finish, and no case has ever made its way through the Tribunal from filing to appeal. And so what can be measured at this early stage is not outcomes, but anticipatory effect, how federations that spent decades operating with far less oversight are already adjusting their behaviour in anticipation of the Act before its enforcement machinery is fully running. 

The most relevant instance can be found in cricket, as it is perhaps one of the first times that the Board of Control for Cricket in India encountered the national framework of sports governance from which it had previously been excluded. For instance, Justice R. M. Lodha, who was in charge of the panel appointed by the Supreme Court, had previously encountered resistance to the requirement for reform by the Board.

After obtaining the required exemption from the right to information act, the Board is expected to fall in line with the requirements of the act in regard to age limits, term of office, and appointment of tribunals, since this is a significant shift for the richest and the most influential sports organization in the country.

It is noteworthy that the Board appears to have benefited from the exemption granted by the Right to Information Act, as it does not receive any funding from the government. However, this act goes against the essence of legislation and goes against the court argument made in 2015 that equated the business of the Board with the business of a government body in the same year.

In addition to cricket, federations, in a general sense, are required to rethink their internal structures and their ethics and dispute resolution mechanisms, and the new method of filing through an online tribunal is a big step forward in the handling of issues, even though it is still too early to predict how effective it will be when a considerable number of cases will need to be processed.

Emerging Issues

The primary issue in the Act is accountability versus independence. The National Sports Board, which is appointed and financed by the Central Government, holds powers of recognition, inquiry, and suspension over federations recognized by FIFA and the IOC, which expect to be free from any government intervention. The Olympic Charter’s Rule 27 states that the federations and their national Olympic committees should maintain their independence and should not succumb to any pressures, political, legal, or economic. Since FIFA has already suspended India on similar grounds, the chance of this incident happening again is not only hypothetical.

Another issue is the constitutional one. Legal experts argue that since the recognition provided under the Act can be seen as a means of licensing the federations, the denial or withdrawal of that recognition can cause complications under Article 19(1)(c) of the Constitution, which protects the right to form associations. While reasonable control is allowed under the Act, the distinction between reasonable regulation and unreasonable dependence on state approval is still disputed.

A further, more technical constitutional question concerns the ouster of civil court jurisdiction itself. Under the Supreme Court’s ruling in L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India (1997), the power of judicial review vested in High Courts under Articles 226 and 227 is considered part of the Constitution’s basic structure and cannot be fully excluded by an ordinary statute, even where a specialised tribunal exists. By restricting appeals from the National Sports Tribunal to the Supreme Court alone, the Act arguably narrows this constitutionally protected avenue of review, a question likely to be tested in future litigation regardless of how well the Tribunal itself performs.

The Act does not provide an even implementation of its provisions on transparency. Statutory audits, RTI provisions, and regulations on federation logos are genuinely effective transparency measures. However, federations that do not receive government funding, most notably the cricket board, are exempted from RTI altogether, leaving the country’s largest and most profitable sporting body outside that particular safeguard even as it comes under the Tribunal’s jurisdiction for the first time.

Also, some legal experts have pointed out that the Act does not cover a complete athlete bill of rights and lacks provisions regarding athlete welfare, fair contracts, mental health support, and image or information rights, which the committees set up under the Act may not be able to deal with.

Way Forward

Establishing formal precautions on the National Sports Board’s investigation and finalising power to suspend the parties provides a solution to the issue of interference that caused the suspension of the AIFF in 2022, and it emphasizes its significance even more with the upcoming scrutiny of India’s application for the 2036 Olympic Games.

The exemption granted under the RTI Act to federations that do not receive government funding needs to be reviewed and, in fact, might need to be replaced with some different system of transparency. This way, the efficiency of public accountability will cease to depend solely on the source of funding of the federation. The Supreme Court itself has previously drawn a parallel between cricket management and state-like activities; therefore, this loophole is highly possible to appear in future court cases despite whatever provisions the Act may contain today.

A separate Athlete Bill of Rights that includes welfare, contractual safeguards, mental well-being, and image rights can bridge the gap that current athletes’ committee system alone cannot cover. Given how long it took for the National Sports Board and Tribunal to become effective after its enactment, putting together a timeline of pending recognition by federations and publication of rules would help to ensure transparent process and procedures and build trust in it within the federations who are still waiting for its completion. Lastly, having the actual data about the number of cases handled by the Tribunal and their resolution time and making it publicly available may allow the government and the public to evaluate whether the initiative works.

References

1. PRS Legislative Research. (2025). The National Sports Governance Bill, 2025: Issues for Consideration. https://prsindia.org/billtrack/prs-products/issues-for-consideration-1754401975

2. Lexology. (2026). National Sports Governance Act, 2025. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0926425f-6437-4515-ab37-a1935b04d350

3. DD News. (2026). Centre notifies National Sports Board, Tribunal rules to streamline governance, dispute resolution. https://ddnews.gov.in/en/centre-notifies-national-sports-board-tribunal-rules-to-streamline-governance-dispute-resolution/

4. Chanda, S., & Shrivastava, D. (2025). National Sports Governance Act, 2025: Reform or Reinforced Control? Law School Policy Review. https://lawschoolpolicyreview.com/2025/09/05/national-sports-governance-act-2025-reform-or-reinforced-control/

5. ABC Live. (2026). Explained: India’s National Sports Governance Act, 2025. https://abclive.in/2026/01/11/national-sports-governance-act-2025/

6. IAS Express. (2025). National Sports Governance Bill 2025: Key Reforms, BCCI Impact and Athlete Rights Explained. https://www.iasexpress.net/national-sports-governance-bill-2025/

7. Outlook India. (2025). BCCI Kept Out of RTI Ambit in Amended National Sports Governance Bill. https://www.outlookindia.com/sports/cricket/bcci-kept-out-of-rti-ambit-in-amended-national-sports-governance-bill

8. Khanna, T. (2025). Kicking Off Reforms or Fouling Autonomy? Athletes and the NSGA. Law School Policy Review. https://lawschoolpolicyreview.com/2025/09/21/kicking-off-reforms-or-fouling-autonomy-athletes-and-the-nsga/

About the Contributor

Sandra Menon is a Research and Editorial Intern at IMPRI and a first-year Master’s student in Public Policy at M.O.P. Vaishnav College for Women, Chennai. Her academic interests lie in public policy and governance.

Acknowledgement

The author extends sincere thanks to the IMPRI team for their guidance.

Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.

Reviewed by: Sruti Halder and Vibha Sethi

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