National Sports Council takes over Badminton Association of Maldives' operations until elections

Sports Commissioner Mohamed Tholal has temporarily transferred the operations of the Badminton Association of Maldives (BAM) to the National Sports Council until the association can hold its general elections.

To ensure continuity of BAM, which currently has no active executive committee (EXCO) after its latest EXCO's term expired, Commissioner Tholal decided to entrust the sports council with BAM's operations until new leadership is elected.

The decision was announced by Tholal on X (formerly Twitter) last night, and detailed that the decision has been formally communicated to both BAM and the Sports Council.

"The Badminton Association of Maldives has been informed today of the decision to temporarily hand over the management of the association to its stakeholder (National Assembly for Sports). The necessary work to elect the new executive committee of the association has been started in consultation with the National Assembly for Sports,” he wrote on X.

The term of BAM's EXCO, which was elected in 2020, ended in February of this year. Although the association attempted to hold an election, the Sports Commissioner's Office questioned the validity of those eligible to vote in the election, and ordered BAM to only hold the election after amending its regulations. However, BAM failed to amend the regulations, and there was no election held, leaving the association in limbo.

After serving three terms as President of BAM, Moosa Nashid resigned from the position last month.

Albeit temporarily, this is the first time BAM's operations have been handed over to the Sports Council. However, there were previous instances where operations were assigned to individual committees by the Sports Commissioner's Office.

Other associations also had similar temporary takeovers happen in the past.

Former Sports Commissioner Heena Ahmed Salim, in 2019, handed over the management of the Volleyball Association to a committee formed by the Sports Council. However, the decision to dissolve the VAM Executive Committee before its term expired and hand over the management to an interim committee was rejected by the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB).