The International Kabaddi Federation (IKF) is going through a major issue of governance with two rival factions at loggerheads over who actually manages the federation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the tenure of the current membership having ended on 31st<\/sup> March, 2026, two groups had called for two different meetings to assert authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On one part is the IKF president Vinod Tiwari, who also happens to be the Director of International and NOC Relations of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA). On the other part is the IKF secretary M. Sathasivam, the former Kabaddi Association of Malaysia (KAM) president together with a key IKF director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is also unclear on which body actually wields the authority – the elected leadership (Executive Committee) or the Board of Directors (BOD). The IKF is registered as a company in India, and the line of authority between the elected leadership and BOD seems blurred. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The IKF has two directors, namely, Kasani Ganeshwar and Tejasvi Gehlot, who happens to be the son of the former IKF president, the late Janardhan Singh Gehlot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The IKF is one of the two major governing bodies for the sport. The IKF is predominantly strong in Asia while the World Kabaddi has a wider global representation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On March 21st<\/sup>, Sathasivam had written to the IKF Board of Directors to convene a meeting to decide on the date for an urgent meeting to sort out the delayed IKF General Body meeting and elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On March 24th, Kasani as an IKF director, send out a BOD meeting notice for 31st<\/sup> March to be held in Hyderabad to resolve the issue. However, Tejasvi did not attend the meeting, apparently claiming that he was not in good terms with Kasani.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Immediately after the BOD meeting notice was served, Vinod called for a separate meeting of the Board of Directors together with the Executive Committee to be held online on 27th<\/sup> March to discuss the same issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both meetings were carried out with the two directors boycotting their rival meetings. Sathasivam attended both meetings<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kasani, has now claimed that Vinod had acted in bad faith in calling for a BOD meeting without the necessary authority and also making it a joint meeting with the Executive Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Based on Kasani\u2019s discussion on the matter with the IKF secretary, the former claimed that the meeting called by Vinod was invalid and illegal due to failure to adhere to various procedural matters and governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is learnt that the meeting called by Vinod, was ended abruptly after only discussing about the tenure of the current leadership. Sathasivam is said to have claimed that he was not given any opportunity to express his views, raise concerns or get any clarity on important issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kasani has also questioned the attendance of Pakistan Kabaddi Federation secretary Mohamad Sarwar, who is not an elected member of the IKF, at the online meeting representing the elected Iranian representative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He is claiming the decision to extend the position of Sathasivam as the secretary until the next full BOD meeting made at the meeting he called om Hyderabad was now legal and binding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not the only issue that besets the IKF, particularly the legality of both Vinod and Sathasivam’s positons already in question since their election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vinod, despite being an Indian citizen, was elected as the president based on his position as the president of the Kuwaiti Kabaddi Federation. The question whether an Indian citizen can hold a national federation leadership in Kuwait has not been answered. Furthermore, India does now allow dual citizenship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His election as the IKF president was also fast-tracked as the the federation approved the membership of the Kuwait Kabaddi Federation just hours before the last IKF elections was scheduled to start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for Sathasivam, he was asked to vacate his position as the president of the Kabaddi Association of Malaysia last year after he was declared insolvent by the Malaysian authorities. It could not be verified whether he was still insolvent or whether the matter was ever discussed by the IKF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The IKF is also under scrutiny in India as per various pending court cases, including a contempt proceeding initiated recently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The International Kabaddi Federation (IKF) is going through a major issue of governance with two rival factions at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[390],"class_list":["post-11282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-kabaddi"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ikf.jpg",2000,1333,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ikf-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ikf-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ikf-768x512.jpg",640,427,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ikf-1024x682.jpg",640,426,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ikf-1536x1024.jpg",1536,1024,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ikf.jpg",2000,1333,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ikf-825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ikf-590x410.jpg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"International<\/a>","tag_info":"International","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ikf.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11282"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11286,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11282\/revisions\/11286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}