Updated on Friday, July 03, 2009, 21:41 IST

Mumbai, July 03: Kehar Singh, the lone man from his panel to be re-elected as secretary of the Mumbai Hockey Association on June 29, was on Friday dramatically stripped off his powers at the first meeting of the newly elected managing committee headed by president Manga Singh Bakshi.

“Kehar Singh did not co-operate with the committee members and failed to provide various documents like members’ register, court cases etc when the rest of the committee asked him to do so. He walked out of the meeting,” informed committee member and Olympian Joaquim Carvalho.

The former national coach said the committee, after the walkout of Kehar, took a number of decisions and one of them was to strip Kehar of his powers, including signing of cheques.

“From now on all the communications have to be addressed to the president. I and (treasurer) Mr Chokhani would be the official spokespersons while Mr Bakshi, Mr Mankit Singh Bal and Chokhani would be the three signatories on all the cheques,” Carvalho said.

He also said a show cause notice will be issued to Kehar for his misbehaviour with the committee members and failure to co-operate with them.

“We also aim to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of the MHA by hosting a tournament in October for which we would be inviting foreign club teams,” he said.

Carvalho said that the newly elected committee has started in serious vein the issue of getting an extension to the lease agreement of its premises with the state government.

“We are taking it on a war footing with the state government. We are also keen to fulfill our election promises to relay the worn-out artificial turf at the MHA-Mahindra Stadium and install new floodlights,” he said.

“We are also starting coaching camps in schools by roping in former players. We want to engage the services of players like Viren Rasquinha, Mervyn Fernandes and others,” Carvalho said.

The former India half-back also said that the MHA functioning is to be streamlined with the formation of various committees to take care of different activities.

“We want to divide the work and not keep everything under one umbrella. All the committees would report back to the managing committee,” he said.

Bureau Report