A Right to Information (RTI) query has revealed that the Uttarakhand Football association is sitting over the certificates of the players from the State who participated in Santosh Trophy tournament.

The Santosh Trophy National football championship’s zonal round, were held in Jammu in the month of February this year. In this tournament team of Uttarakhand also took part but these players are yet to receive the participation certificates even after more than three months.

The delay in distribution of certificates forced the Dehradun based football website, DehradunFootball.com, to file an RTI application with the All India Football Federation to obtain information about the statues of these certificates.

In response to the query, the appellate authority of AIFF, Subrata Dutta confirmed that the Uttarakhand team manager was provided the participation certificate after they played their last match of the Santosh Trophy zonal round in Jammu.  The moderator of the website Nilesh Rana accused the football association of the state for unnecessarily harassing the players of the State.

He said that last year also the participants of AIFF-D license course were not issued certificates and the certificates were issued only after the website filed an RTI with the All India Football Federation seeking information about the result and status of the certificates. 

He added that instead of providing certificates to the players the association forces the players to visit  Haldwani- where its head quarters is located- for these certificates which is an avoidable burden on the students.

“We will be approaching the Union Sports Ministry to intervene in the matter and ask national sports federation to issue strict guidelines regarding issuing of certificates and also the monitoring mechanism,’’ he said.