New Delhi: Union sports minister Mani Shankar Aiyar on Friday launched yet another verbal attack against the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) and accused them of deliberately trying to delay the implementation of the proposed sports policy.

Speaking on the sidelines of the awards ceremony of the NIIT MindChampions Academy tournament 2007, the sports minister said the IOA officials had failed to turn up for meetings on at least three occasions.

“On three occasions we gave IOA the meeting dates and every time they backed out saying it was inconvenient for them,” Aiyar said. “All they did thereafter was to publicly make abusive comments about me and my ministry.”

The IOA and the sports ministry are at loggerheads for the past few months over the merits of the proposed sports policy. While Aiyar said the draft policy is necessary to lift the standard of sports in the country, IOA felt it was against the Olympic charter.

Aiyar claimed the policy had been revised considerably. “Brigadier K.P. Singh Deo of IOA wrote me a long letter on this issue and we incorporated some inputs from it in the policy.”

The minister said that he was ready to table the policy in the Cabinet meeting but didn’t do so as IOA president Suresh Kalmadi said he has not been consulted on the issue.“Since then my office is in touch with the IOA but they are yet to come for a meeting.”

“There is a distinct lack of cooperation from the IOA,” Aiyar alleged. “We have already delayed it by four months and I don’t think we can do it any more,” he warned.