Srinagar, September 27: All India Football Federation (AIFF) has disqualified Hyderya Sports Kashmir FC from I-League qualifiers for submitting fake (Non genuine) bank guarantee.
As the matter was topic of hot debate in Kashmir from long now, AIFF on Monday, September 27 issued statement saying that bank guarantee submitted by Hyderya Sports was found non genuine and it is removing club fom qualifiers.
“AIFF would like to inform all the stakeholders of Hero I League Qualifiers 2021 (the “League”) that upon receiving several complaints regarding the genuineness of a bank guarantee submitted by Hyderya Sports Kashmir FC, the AIFF initiated an enquiry into the matter,” AIFF statement said.
The statement further said that “The inquiry revealed that the bank guarantee so received was not genuine and that the bank guarantee was never officially issued by the bank named therein,” .
“The bank guarantee was one of the mandatory requirements to be eligible to participate in the League, which was to be submitted within a specified timeline. The said timeline now stands elapsed and the mandatory requirement has not been fulfilled by the said club. In light of the same Hyderya’s participation in the League stands withdrawn with immediate effect,” AIFF statement said.
“Furthermore, the AIFF reserves its rights to initiate disciplinary proceedings against the club. The AIFF will not be making any further statement on this matter,” statement added.
Hyderya Sports Kashmir FC was one of the two clubs from J&K , other being Downtown Heroes FC who were nominated by J&K Association for the I-League qualifiers or Second Division I-League.
However , on the basis of standing Hyderya Sports was approved by the AIFF League Comittee. Later it was highlighted through various social media posts and various anonymous email to both AIFF, JKFA and Concerned football stakeholders that Hyderya Sports may have submitted forged documents .
In that NIFF also raised the issue and even approached AIFF in this regard. Later Downtown Heroes also approached JKFA and AIFF which forced JKFA to write to AIFF.
However despite all this AIFF didnt react or replied to any of the party and instead at last moment approached concerned J&K Bank branch from which Hyderya Sports had obtained Bank Guarantee as submitted.
In this whole process of not acting quickly AIFF wasted whole lot of time resulting in not including ant other team in the league. If AIFF would have acted swiftly there would have been other team that could have fulfilled Hyderya Sports place and it could have been Downtown Heroes FC from J&K who deserved it.
Meanwhile as per report in News 18, Hyderya Sports Kashmir FC had tried to make a duplicate of the bank guarantee that was submitted by Downtown Heroes, who finished third in the Jammu and Kashmir Professional League. Hyderya had finished second in the league while J&K Bank finished top. Since J&K Bank is an institutional team, it couldn’t have applied for the I-League qualifiers and hence, Hyderya and Downtown applied.
“It was through the goodwill of the chairman that we had received the bank guarantee from the Dalgate branch of J&K Bank. The employee who had provided us with the guarantee at that time has been transferred to another branch. Now, the branch manager is saying that ‘I hadn’t provided the bank guarantee and whoever did, I don’t know how he did it.’ We asked them to confirm it with that employee but he said it won’t work and we will have to deposit Rs 25 lakhs,” Hyderya Sports spokesperson was quoted as saying by News18.com.