Special Series: Reimagining Sports Governance in India

Ediorial Note

Law School Policy Review announces the launch of a special blog series on the Sports Governance Act 2025, a transformative piece of legislation that seeks to reshape the regulatory landscape of Indian sport. The Act marks the most ambitious effort yet to overhaul how sports bodies in India are structured, governed, and held to account through its introduction of binding standards of transparency, accountability, and inclusivity

The Act arrives against a backdrop of recurring concerns: the Delhi High Court’s intervention in the Wrestling Federation of India’s elections, the Supreme Court’s long-running oversight of BCCI reforms, and governance failures that led to FIFA suspending the All India Football Federation in 2022. The law also follows intense debates on gender equity and athlete welfare after the 2023 women wrestlers’ protests at Jantar Mantar. At the same time, India’s ambitious bid to host the 2036 Olympic Games in Ahmedabad brings forward the urgent need for robust governance frameworks that can withstand international scrutiny.

While the Act promises a framework that could align India with global norms of governance, its effectiveness will depend on how courts, regulators, and federations negotiate its provisions in practice. This series seeks to explore critical questions raised by the new law. Will judicial oversight expand or retreat under the Act’s framework? How will the balance between autonomy of sporting federations and state regulation evolve? Can the Act meaningfully address systemic issues such as athlete welfare, representation of women and marginalized groups, and conflict of interest in sports administration?

By drawing together contributions from legal scholars, practitioners, and other contributors, the series aims to interrogate not just the text of the law, but its potential to transform the culture of Indian sport. In doing so, it hopes to place the Act within wider debates on governance and the future of sport in India.

LSPR Editorial Board 2025-26*

The Editorial Board thanks Saksham Agrawal (Editor, LSPR) for ideating the theme and conceptualizing the series. It also thanks Jairaj Singh Basur, Shauryaveer Chaudhry and Arya Harishankar for their assistance in developing the series.