Every national sports federation in India now draws its recognition, its funding and its committee composition from the National Sports Governance Act, 2025. The Act caps executive committees at fifteen members and provides for a National Sports Tribunal to hear federation disputes.
That Tribunal, and the scheme built around it, arrived in stages. The Act received the President’s assent in August 2025 and was brought into force provision by provision from January 2026, with a second tranche of provisions notified in May 2026. The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports notified rules for national sports bodies in January 2026 and rules for the National Sports Board in May 2026. In 2026 the Supreme Court asked the Board of Control for Cricket in India and its affiliated State associations why the Act should not apply to them, and that question is still pending.
Who the Act applies to matters because sports federations sit in an awkward constitutional position. A national federation picks the team that represents India, which is a public function by any ordinary measure, yet the Supreme Court held in Zee Telefilms Ltd. v. Union of India that the Board of Control for Cricket in India is not “State” within the meaning of Article 12. Supervision of these bodies therefore ran for two decades through an executive instrument, the National Sports Development Code of India, 2011, whose force came from the conditions attached to government recognition and funding rather than from any statute. Chapter II of the Act supplies the statutory footing that those conditions had to substitute for.
What the Act leaves unsettled is how much of itself is operative. The two commencement notifications brought in the provisions that constitute the Board and the Tribunal, along with the governance conditions imposed on federations. They left out the provisions that give the Board its powers of recognition, inquiry and suspension, and the sections that fix what the Tribunal may decide. A federation is bound today by Section 4 and Section 14 while a good deal of the enforcement machinery waits for a further notification.
Whether a federation’s sitting committee survives the Act is the first question Section 4 produces, and a worked example makes the arithmetic concrete. A State association affiliated to a recognised national federation goes to its elections with a twenty-five member executive committee, a president aged seventy-two, and one woman among the elected members.
Two of those facts fail the section outright and the third is conditional. Section 4(1)(b) caps the executive committee at fifteen members and its proviso requires that at least four of them be women, so a committee of twenty-five carrying one woman breaches both limits. The president’s age is the conditional one, because the first proviso to Section 4(2) puts the ceiling at seventy on the last date of nomination and the second lifts it to seventy-five only where the international charter and the body’s own bye-laws both permit it. A Delhi High Court judgment of 2026 reached that arithmetic on a national federation with a twenty-five member committee, and rather than voiding the election outright it left the sitting body to manage day-to-day affairs and directed fresh elections under the Act.
Recognition decides who the National Sports Governance Act, 2025 binds
Recognition by the National Sports Board is the gate, because the Act fastens almost every obligation to a “recognised sports organisation” and Section 2(v) defines that as a sports organisation the Board has recognised as a National Sports Body under Section 8(1). An association that calls itself a national federation, prints “India” on its letterhead and sends teams abroad is not inside the Act by virtue of any of those things. It is inside when it holds Board recognition, and outside when it does not.
Section 3 names the four bodies that stand as national sports governing bodies: the National Olympic Committee, the National Paralympic Committee, a National Sports Federation for each designated sport, and a Regional Sports Federation for each designated sport. There may be only one National Olympic Committee and one National Paralympic Committee, each governing multiple disciplines, under Section 3(2). International recognition is not optional for any of them. The National Olympic Committee must hold the recognition and affiliation of the International Olympic Committee, the National Paralympic Committee those of the International Paralympic Committee, and every National Sports Federation those of the relevant international governing body, with a proviso in Section 3(5) for a designated sport that has no international body at all.
The form the organisation takes also decides eligibility. Under Section 8(3) no body may be recognised unless it is a society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 or a State Societies Registration Act, a not-for-profit company incorporated under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013, or a trust created under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 or a State Trusts Act, and unless it has the sole object of developing sport. A body carrying commercial objects in its memorandum alongside sporting ones fails that condition on its face. Section 8(4) requires periodic renewal of recognition on terms the Board’s regulations will specify.
Bodies already in the system did not have to start again. Section 8(5) deems every sports organisation recognised as a National Sports Body by the Central Government before commencement to hold Board recognition, so the register was populated on day one and the Act applies to those bodies mutatis mutandis. The case for putting sports governance on a statutory basis had been pressed in India for years before that happened, both in the argument for enacting a central law to govern sport and in the 2017 draft national code on good governance in sport.
What that recognition buys, and what it costs, sits in Chapter VII. Section 14(1) makes a recognised sports organisation the only kind of body eligible for grants or other financial assistance from the Central Government, and Section 15 puts it under a duty to ensure that its voting members and affiliate units comply both with the international charters and with the Act. Section 27(3) reaches past the organisations to the athletes, because no person may represent India, a State or a district in a trial, tournament or event in a designated sport without authorisation from a National Sports Body or one of its affiliate units.
Sports bodies that fall outside the Act’s reach
A sports body that holds no Board recognition remains autonomous, and the Delhi High Court said so within months of the Act coming into force. In Indian Olympic Association v. Ski and Snowboard India, a Division Bench held in March 2026 that a body registered as a society under the Karnataka Societies Registration Act, 1960 and not recognised as a National Sports Body continued to be governed by its own memorandum of association, bye-laws and registered rules, and that the provisions of the Act were not applicable to it. The Bench went on to hold that the Indian Olympic Association “is not vested with any authority or power to appoint any ad hoc Committee in relation to the functions of an independent body”.
Two consequences follow for anyone reading the Act against a real organisation. Affiliation to the Indian Olympic Association does not by itself make a body a recognised National Sports Federation, so the chain of affiliation and the chain of recognition are separate things. And where a body sits outside the recognition gate, neither the Act’s governance mandates nor the Indian Olympic Association’s supervisory claims reach its internal affairs, which remain a matter for its own constitution and for the ordinary civil law of societies.
Section 4 sets the composition every national sports body must carry
Section 4 makes eight organs compulsory and then restricts who may sit on the one that runs the body. A federation that has a president, a secretary and a working committee, and nothing else, is non-compliant however well it is run, because Section 4(1) requires a General Body, an Executive Committee, an Ethics Committee, a Dispute Resolution Committee, an Athletes Committee, a President, a Secretary General and a Treasurer.
The General Body under Section 4(1)(a) takes an equal number of representatives from each affiliate unit, together with such ex officio members as the bye-laws and the international charters provide, and a proviso requires it to include sportspersons of outstanding merit and other prescribed categories. The Executive Committee under Section 4(1)(b) may not exceed fifteen members. At least two of them must be sportspersons of outstanding merit, two must be elected to it by the Athletes Committee from among themselves, and a proviso requires that at least four members be women. A second proviso leaves the voting rights of the Athletes Committee representatives to the bye-laws, which is where a federation can still narrow athlete influence without breaching the cap.
Smaller federations are not left to build every organ from scratch. Where a National Sports Body has no Ethics Committee of its own, the proviso to Section 4(1)(c) makes the National Olympic Committee’s Ethics Committee serve in its place, and the proviso to Section 4(1)(d) does the same for the Dispute Resolution Committee. The President heads the body and presides over both the Executive Committee and the General Body, the Secretary General heads the administration and carries out the decisions of both, and the Treasurer holds the funds and accounts. Where an international charter provides for a full-time head of administration, the proviso to Section 4(1)(g) removes the elected post altogether.
Age, term and cooling-off limits on sports body office bearers
The age ceiling is seventy, not seventy-five, and the difference lies in a proviso that most summaries of the Act collapse. Section 4(2) first sets the general qualifications to contest an election or seek nomination to the Executive Committee: the person must be an Indian citizen who has attained at least twenty-five years of age, must be proposed and seconded by a voting member of the General Body, must not have been declared of unsound mind, and must comply with the international charters and the bye-laws on age and term. A government servant needs the necessary approvals from the Government.
Four provisos then do the real work. The first bars anyone more than seventy years of age on the last date of nomination. The second permits a person aged between seventy and seventy-five to contest or seek nomination only if the International Charters and Statutes and the bye-laws both permit it, and provides that such a person, once elected, serves a full term. The conditional structure is the point: nobody between seventy and seventy-five has a statutory entitlement to stand, and a federation whose own bye-laws stop at seventy cannot admit such a candidate even where its international charter would.
The third proviso restricts the three senior posts. A candidate for President, Secretary General or Treasurer must either be a sportsperson of outstanding merit, or have served at least one full term as a member of the National Sports Body’s Executive Committee, or have held one of those three posts in an affiliate unit. The fourth caps tenure: those posts may be held for up to three consecutive terms, separately or in any combination of them, after which the holder becomes eligible again only following a mandatory cooling-off period of one term. Section 4(3) puts a ceiling of four years on the Executive Committee’s own term, and Section 4(4) leaves the mode of election, eligibility and disqualification to the rules.
National Sports Bodies Rules, 2026 on sportspersons of outstanding merit
The National Sports Governance (National Sports Bodies) Rules, 2026 supply the content that Section 4 leaves to be prescribed, and they came into force in January 2026. Section 2(z) of the Act defines a sportsperson of outstanding merit only by pointing back to the proviso to Section 4(1)(a), so until these Rules arrived the category had a name and no criteria.
The Rules require every National Sports Body to carry at least four sportspersons of outstanding merit as voting members of its General Body, with gender parity between them. Eligibility runs on two levels: a general criterion that every candidate must satisfy, and a tiered criterion set out in a Schedule, which grades sporting achievement so that an Olympic medallist and a national champion enter through different doors. The point of the tiers is that a federation in a sport with no Olympic representation can still populate the category honestly.
Selection is meant to be mechanical rather than curated. Every National Sports Body must prepare separate male and female rosters at least ninety days before its Executive Committee’s term expires, each roster carrying ten times the number of athletes needed in the General Body, which leaves the choice inside a pool the federation cannot assemble on the eve of a poll. Elections to the elected posts on the Executive Committee are to be held once every four years, matching the ceiling in Section 4(3). Federations were given six months from the Rules coming into force to amend their bye-laws, and that deadline is what turned the Act’s composition requirements into a live compliance problem during 2026 rather than a future one.
The National Sports Board holds the recognition and suspension powers
The Board is the Act’s regulator, and Section 5 read with Section 6 gives it ten powers that reach from recognition through inquiry to the removal of an entire committee. A federation that loses its international affiliation, or fails to publish its accounts, answers to the Board rather than to the Ministry. Section 6, the section carrying those powers, was not brought into force by either commencement notification.
Section 5(1) leaves establishment of the Board to a notification by the Central Government, and provides for a Chairperson and such number of other Members as may be prescribed. Section 5(2) requires appointments to be made from persons of ability, integrity and standing who possess special knowledge or practical experience in public administration, sports governance, sports law or related fields, on the recommendation of a search-cum-selection committee. Section 5(4) makes the Board a body corporate, and Section 5(5) puts its head office at Delhi. The National Sports Governance (National Sports Board) Rules, 2026, which took effect in May 2026, fix the Board at a Chairperson and two Members, give each a term of three years or until the age of sixty-five whichever comes first, and allow one re-appointment subject to that age limit.
Section 6 lists what the Board may do. It grants Board recognition and registers affiliate units, and may suspend or cancel either. It maintains the register of National Sports Bodies and their affiliate units, conducts inquiries under Section 9, and constitutes ad hoc administrative bodies under Section 11 or directs a federation to constitute one. It issues the guidelines under which federations frame their Codes of Ethics, frames the Safe Sports Policy for the protection of women and minor athletes, keeps the roster of the National Sports Election Panel, collaborates with international bodies and issues compliance guidelines to federations, and takes prescribed measures for the rights and welfare of athletes and support personnel.
Two further institutions sit alongside the Board. Section 16 provides for a National Sports Election Panel, notified by the Central Government on the Board’s recommendation and drawn from retired Chief Election Commissioners, Election Commissioners, Deputy Election Commissioners, State Election Commissioners and Chief Electoral Officers of the States with experience of conducting elections under the Representation of the People Act, 1951. Panel members act as electoral officers over elections to the Executive Committee and the Athletes Committee, and Sections 16(6) and 16(7) push the same discipline down a level by requiring each federation to prepare a panel for its affiliate units and each affiliate unit to appoint an electoral officer from it.
That Panel governs how a federation elects, and Chapters V and VI govern how it conducts itself. Section 12 requires every National Sports Body to frame a Code of Ethics consistent with the codes of the international bodies, including measures under Section 12(4) protecting vulnerable persons from abuse by a “person in a position of trust”, which the Explanation defines as anyone exercising authority, control or influence over another person connected with the federation’s affairs. Section 13 puts the Safe Sports Policy on the Board and requires every federation, under Section 13(3), to run an internal grievance redressal mechanism for athletes, coaches and others associated with it.
Inquiry and suspension of a sports body’s recognition under Sections 9 and 10
An inquiry under Section 9 begins either on the Board’s own motion or on a complaint, but a complainant has to go to the federation first. The section lets the Board inquire into matters affecting the welfare of sportspersons, the development of sport in the country, or the misuse of public funds, where it is satisfied that there is reasonable cause. A proviso bars it from entertaining a complaint unless the complainant has exhausted all available remedies with the National Sports Body or its affiliate units, and a second proviso relaxes that where using those remedies would cause unnecessary delay or unreasonable prejudice. An athlete with a selection grievance therefore starts at the federation’s own grievance mechanism under Section 13(3), not at the Board.
Section 10(1) sets out when recognition or registration may be suspended or cancelled, on six grounds. Three of them originate outside the Board: the suspension or cancellation of the body’s international recognition, the suspension or disaffiliation of an affiliate unit by its own national federation, and a report by the Registrar of Companies or Registrar of Societies of gross irregularities in internal functioning or removal of the body’s name. The other three are failures of the body itself, being violation of the Act, rules or regulations including the conditions of recognition, failure to hold Executive Committee elections or gross irregularities in them, and failure to publish annual audited accounts or the misuse, misapplication or misappropriation of public funds. Where the ground is a loss of international recognition or a disaffiliation, the proviso makes the Board’s order co-terminus with the international body’s action, extendable for recorded reasons.
The Board cannot act alone on any of this. Section 10(2) requires it to consult the international body before suspending or cancelling the recognition of a National Sports Federation or Regional Sports Federation, and to consult the federation before doing the same to an affiliate unit, and then either to direct the body to correct the deficiency or to hold a hearing before deciding. An appeal against any such order lies to the Tribunal under Section 10(3).
Section 11 keeps the Board at arm’s length further still. Where a federation loses its international recognition, Section 11(1) provides that the normalisation process under the international charters applies and that the Board shall not interfere in it. Only where there is no such process, or where recognition has been cancelled or suspended under Section 10, does Section 11(2) let the Board constitute an ad hoc administrative body or direct one to be constituted. Section 11(5) then caps such a body at five eminent sports administrators who have no past association with the discipline and no conflict of interest, and bars any of them from sitting on more than one ad hoc body at a time.
Provisions of the National Sports Governance Act, 2025 now in force
Roughly half the Act is operative, and the half that is not includes most of what a reader would assume to be its teeth. Section 1(2) provides that the Act comes into force on such date as the Central Government appoints by notification, and that different dates may be appointed for different provisions, which is the mechanism the Government has used twice.
| Commencement | Provisions |
|---|---|
| With effect from 1 January 2026 | Sections 1 to 3; Section 4(1), (2) and (4); Section 5(1) and (2); Section 8(5); Section 11(1); Sections 14 and 15; Section 17(1) to (7) and (10); Sections 30 and 31; Sections 33 to 38 |
| With effect from 12 May 2026, by S.O. 2406(E) | Section 5(3), (4) and (5); Section 7; Section 17(8) and (9); Sections 18, 19, 21, 28 and 29 |
| Not yet notified | Section 4(3); Section 6; Section 8(1) to (4) and (6) to (8); Sections 9 and 10; Section 11(2) to (5); Sections 12, 13 and 16; Sections 20 and 22 to 27; Section 32 |
The third row carries the consequences. The Board exists as an institution under Section 5 and has a staff under Section 7, and the powers it is supposed to exercise under Section 6 have not commenced. The recognition machinery in Section 8(1) to 8(4) is not in force either, so the register currently rests on the deeming provision in Section 8(5) rather than on any recognition the Board has granted.
The position on the Tribunal is the sharpest instance of the same pattern. Section 17 constitutes it, appoints it and pays for it, while Section 20, which fixes the limits of its jurisdiction, and Sections 22 to 26, which transfer pending cases to it, bar the civil courts, give it the powers of a civil court and make its orders executable, are all outside both notifications. A litigant in 2026 therefore faces a Tribunal that has been constituted but not yet given the jurisdiction it was constituted to exercise, and the civil courts retain what Section 23 will eventually take from them. Section 4(3), the four-year ceiling on a committee’s term, is also unnotified, although the National Sports Bodies Rules, 2026 require elections every four years in any event.
Disputes the National Sports Tribunal may decide under Section 17
The Tribunal is a three-member body constituted for the independent, speedy, effective and cost-efficient disposal of sports-related disputes, and Section 17(1) requires the Central Government to constitute it by notification. A wrestler dropped from a squad, a State unit disaffiliated by its federation and an office bearer disqualified from a poll would all have gone to a High Court under Article 226 before the Act; the design sends them to a specialist forum instead.
Its composition is judicial at the top. Section 17(2) requires the chairperson to be a person who is or has been a Judge of the Supreme Court or the Chief Justice of a High Court, and Section 17(3) requires the two members to be persons of eminence in public life with wide knowledge and experience of sport, public administration and law. Appointments are made by the Central Government on the recommendation of a Search-cum-Selection Committee comprising, under Section 17(4), the Chief Justice of India or a Supreme Court Judge the Chief Justice recommends as its chairperson, the Secretary in the Ministry of Law and Justice, and the Secretary in the Department of Sports. Section 17(6) opens with a non obstante clause covering any judgment, order or decree of any court, requires the Committee to recommend a panel of two names for each post, and asks the Government to decide preferably within three months.
Independence is protected at the exit as well as the entrance. Section 18(1) lets the Central Government remove a chairperson or member who has been adjudged insolvent, convicted of an offence involving moral turpitude, become physically or mentally incapable, acquired a prejudicial financial interest, or so abused the office as to make continuation prejudicial to the public interest, with a hearing required on the last three grounds. Section 18(2) then adds the real safeguard: no member may be removed on those grounds unless the Chief Justice of India, or a nominee judge, recommends removal after an inquiry on a reference from the Government. Section 17(9) lets the Tribunal frame its own procedure and timelines, and Section 17(10) charges its expenses on the Consolidated Fund of India.
What it will be able to do once Sections 22 to 26 commence is substantial. Section 24 gives it the powers of a civil court under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 over nine matters including summoning witnesses, discovery, evidence on affidavit, review of its own decisions and the setting aside of ex parte orders, with public records called for subject to Sections 129 and 130 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023. Its proceedings are judicial proceedings for the purposes of Sections 228, 229, 233, 257 and 267 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and it is a civil court for Section 215 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, while Section 21 makes its members and staff public servants under Section 2(28) of the Sanhita.
Those powers arrive with a transfer and a bar attached to them. Section 22 transfers to the Tribunal every pending civil case within the Act’s scope in which a National Sports Body is a party before a District Court or High Court, from a date the Central Government specifies, to be heard from the stage reached or afresh for written reasons. Section 23 then bars the civil courts from any matter the Tribunal is empowered to determine and bars injunctions against action taken under its powers, and Section 26 makes its orders executable as a decree of a civil court.
Appeals from the Tribunal go straight to the top of the judicial hierarchy. Section 25 gives an appeal to the Supreme Court within thirty days against any order that is not interlocutory, and the Supreme Court may entertain a late appeal where the appellant was prevented by sufficient cause. No appeal lies from a decision made with the consent of the parties, and where the International Charters and Statutes provide for an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, that route displaces the Supreme Court.
Four disputes excluded from the National Sports Tribunal under Section 20
Section 20 keeps four categories of dispute away from the Tribunal, and each exclusion protects a forum that already has the field. The first, in Section 20(a), covers any dispute or conflict arising during the Olympic Games, the Paralympic Games, the Commonwealth Games, the Asian Games or similar events organised by an International Federation, where the event’s own machinery operates to the timetable of the competition. The second, in Section 20(b), covers disputes within the exclusive jurisdiction of a federation’s internal disputes resolution committee, of any other tribunal or court, of an International Federation, or of the Court of Arbitration for Sport at Lausanne.
The third exclusion is the one a student is most likely to be asked about. Section 20(c) keeps doping disputes out where the Disciplinary Panels constituted under the National Anti-Doping Act, 2022 have exclusive jurisdiction, which leaves the Indian anti-doping regime intact and separate from this Act. The fourth, in Section 20(d), covers any matter in respect of which the international charters require the parties to submit to a specified mechanism or forum.
All four exclusions share a direction of travel. Read with Section 37, which makes federations primarily guided by the international charters and lets the Central Government issue a clarificatory notification where the Act and a charter conflict, the pattern across the statute is that domestic machinery yields to international sporting machinery rather than competing with it. Section 20 is itself among the unnotified provisions, so the exclusions will arrive together with the jurisdiction they qualify.
Courts have applied the National Sports Governance Act, 2025 since January 2026
Two reported Delhi High Court judgments applied the Act within four months of its partial commencement, one to hold it inapplicable and the other to enforce Section 4 against a sitting federation. The first, in March 2026, was the Ski and Snowboard India case discussed above. The second went the other way on a body squarely inside the recognition gate.
The federation in Anil Dhupar v. Chintan N. Parikh, decided in April 2026, had gone to the poll with a twenty-five member executive committee. Measuring that committee against Section 4, the Court found it non-compliant both on the cap of fifteen and on the mandatory representation requirements, and recorded that federations had six months from the commencement of the 2026 Rules to amend their bye-laws.
The election itself survived the challenge to it. The complaint about its conduct was dismissed as devoid of merit, the disqualification complained of having complied with the applicable rules. The Court nonetheless directed fresh elections under the Act and the Rules, allowed the results of the 2024 poll to stand for day-to-day management only, and appointed a retired Chief Justice of a High Court as Administrator to oversee compliance and conduct the fresh elections. Its most quotable line for a student is that in view of the enactment of the 2025 Act, the issue raised about non-compliance with the Sports Code “has become academic”.
That single sentence closes a twenty-year chapter. Judicial supervision of Indian sports bodies had been built on the National Sports Development Code of India, 2011 precisely because there was no statute to build it on: Zee Telefilms Ltd. v. Union of India had held by a majority of three to two that the Board of Control for Cricket in India is not “State” under Article 12, applying the tests in Pradeep Kumar Biswas v. Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, because it was neither created by statute nor financially, functionally or administratively controlled by the Government. The majority left open a remedy under Article 226 for breach of a public duty, and the Delhi High Court took that opening up in Rahul Mehra v. Union of India in 2022, holding that national sports bodies fall within writ jurisdiction under Article 226 even though they are not “State”, because they perform State-like functions such as selecting national teams and representing the country. The Act now supplies as statutory duties much of what those judgments had to derive from function, which is what makes the Sports Code point academic.
The BCCI question left open under the National Sports Governance Act, 2025
The Supreme Court asked in September 2026 why the Act should not apply to the Board of Control for Cricket in India and its affiliated State associations, and directed counsel to take instructions on whether their office bearers’ terms and conditions of service ought to be regulated under it. No substantive order was passed and the matter remains pending, so nothing is settled either way.
The reason the question arises is a matter of statutory reading rather than of sporting politics. The Act binds a recognised sports organisation, which Section 2(v) ties to recognition by the Board under Section 8(1). Section 14(1) makes recognition the condition of receiving central grants, which is the lever that gives recognition its value, and Section 14(2) makes a recognised organisation receiving grants from the Central Government or a State Government a public authority under the Right to Information Act, 2005 only “with respect to utilisation of such grants or any other financial assistance”. Those seven words carry more weight than any other phrase in the Act: transparency attaches to the money, not to the body.
A federation that takes no central funding therefore sits outside most of the levers the Act pulls, and cricket’s governing body has historically taken none. Zee Telefilms had already put it outside Article 12, and reporting on the 2026 Rules records that the reach of the Right to Information Act was confined to bodies dependent on government funding and support. Whether an Act built on recognition and grants can reach a body that needs neither is the question now before the Court, and it is the most consequential unresolved point in Indian sports law.
Frequently asked questions
Is the National Sports Governance Act, 2025 fully in force?
No, the Act is in force only in part. Section 1(2) allows different dates for different provisions, and the Central Government has used that power twice, with effect from 1 January 2026 and from 12 May 2026. Section 6, which carries the Board’s powers, Sections 8(1) to 8(4), which carry the recognition machinery, Sections 9 and 10 on inquiry and suspension, Sections 12, 13 and 16, and Sections 20 and 22 to 27 on the Tribunal’s jurisdiction, were outside both notifications.
Does the National Sports Governance Act, 2025 apply to the BCCI?
Whether the Act reaches the Board of Control for Cricket in India has not been settled. The Act binds a body recognised by the National Sports Board under Section 8(1), and Section 14 ties both the funding privilege and the Right to Information obligation to central or State grants, which the Board has historically not taken. In September 2026 the Supreme Court asked the Board and its State associations why the Act should not apply to them, and that question is pending without any order.
What is the age limit for office bearers of a national sports body?
Seventy years on the last date of nomination, under the first proviso to Section 4(2). The second proviso allows a person aged between seventy and seventy-five to contest only where the International Charters and Statutes and the body’s own bye-laws both permit it, and such a person, once elected, serves a full term. The minimum age to contest is twenty-five.
What happened to the National Sports Development Code of India, 2011?
It has been superseded in substance by the Act and the 2026 Rules. The Delhi High Court held in April 2026 that in view of the enactment of the 2025 Act, a complaint of non-compliance with the Sports Code had become academic, and it directed fresh federation elections under the Act and the Rules instead.
Where does an appeal from the National Sports Tribunal lie?
To the Supreme Court, under Section 25, within thirty days of the decision appealed against, extendable where the appellant shows sufficient cause. The appeal does not lie against an interlocutory order or against a decision made with the consent of the parties, and where the International Charters and Statutes provide for an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, that route applies instead.
References
The National Sports Governance Act, 2025 (Act 25 of 2025), assented to on 18 August 2025 (sections 1 to 5, 6, 8 to 18, 20 to 27, 30 to 34 and 37 cited)
Gazette of India, Extraordinary, Part II Section 1, No. 30, 18 August 2025, CG-DL-E-19082025-265482, publishing the Act
Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, on the commencement of select provisions of the Act, 31 December 2025, appointing 1 January 2026
Notification S.O. 2406(E) dated 12 May 2026, bringing into force Section 5(3) to (5), Section 7, Section 17(8) and (9) and Sections 18, 19, 21, 28 and 29
The National Sports Governance (National Sports Bodies) Rules, 2026, notified in January 2026
The National Sports Governance (National Sports Board) Rules, 2026, notified in May 2026
Zee Telefilms Ltd. v. Union of India, (2005) 4 SCC 649 (Supreme Court of India)
Pradeep Kumar Biswas v. Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, (2002) 5 SCC 111 (Supreme Court of India)
Rahul Mehra v. Union of India, W.P.(C) 195/2010 (Delhi High Court, 16 August 2022)
Indian Olympic Association v. Ski and Snowboard India, 2026 SCC OnLine Del 1218 (Delhi High Court, Division Bench, March 2026)
Anil Dhupar v. Chintan N. Parikh, 2026 SCC OnLine Del 1950 (Delhi High Court, April 2026)
The National Anti-Doping Act, 2022 (Act 15 of 2022)
The National Sports Development Code of India, 2011, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports
The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Act 45 of 2023), sections 2(28), 228, 229, 233, 257 and 267
The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (Act 47 of 2023), sections 129 and 130
The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (Act 46 of 2023), section 215
The Right to Information Act, 2005 (Act 22 of 2005)
Disclaimer
This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. The National Sports Governance Act, 2025 is in force in part, the provisions notified may change, and whether a particular body is bound by it turns on whether it holds recognition as a National Sports Body. A federation, an affiliate unit or an athlete facing a question under the Act should take advice from a qualified practitioner on the provisions actually in force on the relevant date.
Allow notifications
