ISLAMABAD, March 11 Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF), already sinking in a quicksand of controversies after the New Delhi debacle, received another jolt on Thursday when six local clubs succeeded in obtaining a stay order against the Islamabad Hockey Association (IHA) elections and the scrutiny of clubs in the region.

The additional sessions judge Tanveer Mir directed the PHF and IHA representatives to appear before the court in order to clarify their positions over the scrutiny process of the clubs and the local hockey association elections.

Malik Saleem, an official of a local club, told Dawn on Thursday “We are happy to get a stay order against the recent election process of local clubs and the exercise of wrong scrutiny of the hockey federation.”

He said that six hockey clubs — Qadeer, Shahbaz senior Kurrey, National Institute of Health, Al-Amman, Battle Tigers and Rawal — were ignored besides the cancellation of voting rights of two clubs. Malik Saleem also pointed out “The six clubs were featuring from the IHA platform for the last 20 years besides appearing in tournaments organised by the PHF for the last two years. PHF's wrong move disappointed several young players.”

When approached, former Olympian Naveed Alam, said “Hundreds of local hockey clubs in 72 districts of Pakistan lost their playing rights due to the poor scrutiny process initiated by the PHF management headed by Asif Bajwa.”

The local clubs, he said, were not given any financial support by the PHF and they were eliminated, despite their performance in local events, during the fake scrutiny.

“The whole process of scrutiny was engineered with a political agenda to eliminate the opposition in local associations,” he alleged.

The former Olympian asserted that the Federal Ministry of Sports should probe into the hockey federation's “illegal scrutiny” process.

Meanwhile, no PHF official was available to comment on the development.