A week after the Indian Olympic Association's (IOA) Executive Committee (EC) asked its president PT Usha to convene an emergency meeting to address the lingering issues, Usha is yet to receive the said letter.

Eleven of the 15 EC members had, last Tuesday, listed several issues that need to be urgently resolved as per the IOA constitution. The EC members had pointed to the "arbitrary" functioning of CEO Raghu Ram Iyer and Ajay Narang, who is employed as Usha's executive assistant.

"I have not even received the letter purported to be addressed to me," Usha said. "There would have been no need for such calls had my collegaues allowed the EC meeting of March 28 to proceed. These honourable members would not allow any business to be transacted if the EC meetings were video recorded," the track legend alleged.

Usha added that she has put athletes' comfort at the centre of her decision-making. Rebutting the EC's charge that Usha and Narang are "arbitrarily making hotel and ticket bookings, and granting unapproved random accreditations," Usha claimed that despite the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) mandate that all accommodation bookings must be completed by August 2023, "no action had been taken until I stepped in and took things in my hand."

"IOA will have to book rooms for a larger team of coaching and support staff to be at hand in Paris than will be allowed in the Games Village. We blocked rooms in an apartment complex for extra team officials but the booking lapsed since IOA did not release the advance sought," Usha said.

The IOA, Usha added, had booked the rooms for golfers in November last year but the booking lapsed due to lack of payments. In case of shooting, whose venue Chateauroux Shooting Centre, is roughly 300 kilometres from Paris, the IOA helped NRAI secure funds from the sports ministry and pay the advance.

Usha added that two members of the three-member committee formed last December to oversee administrative and logistical arrangements for the Olympics "made themselves unavailable and prevented the appointment of anyone else in that position."

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