Bengaluru, 6th March 2019: In a much awaited announcement, the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) has confirmed that its next Annual General Meeting (AGM) along with the elections of its new set of office bearers will be held on 24th March, 2019 in Bengaluru.

This announcement was made via a notice dated 2nd March 2019, addressed to all the affiliated States and Units of the BFI, and was also uploaded on the BFI website on 4th March.

These upcoming elections are expected to see the incumbent BFI office bearers led by President K Govindaraj and Secretary General Chander Mukhi Sharma re-contest for a second four year team. 

The current team of the Govindaraj led faction helmed the Federation between 2014-2018  . The initial few months saw a friction between the Govindaraj faction and another group  led by BJP MP from Maharashtra Poonam Mahajan. This led to a freezing of IMG-Reliance funds to the BFI, despite which the Govindaraj led faction successfully managed to conduct all the national championships as well as send Indian teams abroad to international events. Gradually, the Govindaraj led BFI, which had already been recognized by the BFI, also got recognition from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports and the Indian Olympic Association.

In terms of the national teams’ performances, the men’s team finished 7th in the 2016 FIBA Asia Challenge before failing to reach the second round of the FIBA World Cup 2019 Asian Qualifiers. Meanwhile, the women’s senior, U16 and U18 teams were all promoted back to Division A.

The incumbent BFI regime also had the distinction of successfully hosting three consecutive Asian Championship events- the FIBA Asia Women’s Cup and the FIBA U16 Women’s Asian Championship in 2017 and the FIBA U18 Women’s Asian Championship in 2018.