LAHORE: The Pakistan Hockey Federation has apparently split into two factions after Shehla Raza was elected by the Congress as the president of the country’s hockey governing body in Karachi on Tuesday, ahead of another Congress meeting in Islamabad on Thursday where Tariq Hussain Bugti will be endorsed as the PHF chief.

Bugti was named ad-hoc PHF president by caretaker Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar before being named full-time president.

However, another faction of Congress members met in Karachi, where Shehla was elected as PHF’s first woman president — the move creating an air of uncertainty with Pakistan’s standing in the global game at its lowest ebb.

Sources told Dawn that Congress members from Balochistan and Sindh attended Tuesday’s meeting, which was abstained by members from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Bugti’s group rejected the elections, declaring it null and void as “no representative of the Pakistan Olympic Associa­tion and the Pakistan Sports Board attended the meeting in Karachi”.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2024