Accusing the Centre of concealing then Sports Minister Uma Bharati's order on limiting the tenure of office-bearers of sports bodies, Indian Hockey Federation senior vice-president Narinder Batra today sought initiation of contempt proceedings against the Ministry's sports secretary for misleading the court.

In a contempt petition filed before Justice Gita Mittal, Batra alleged that while mentioning Bharti's October 11, 2001 noting on the file, the Centre deliberately concealed her November 2001 order that made it clear that the guidelines were not to be kept in abeyance.

Appearing for Batra, senior counsel Arun Jaitley, produced a copy of the purported order passed by Bharati and wondered why the government chose not to disclose it to the court.

Terming it a "very serious matter", Jaitley said it was a deliberate attempt to mislead the court.

The Centre's counsel, Siddharth Mridul, said whatever was there on the relevant file we showed to the court and wanted to know the source from which the petitioner got the said copies of Bharati's order, passed in her capacity as Sports Minister.

Justice Gita Mittal asked the Centre to clarify by Monday if the two pages, claimed to have been in the file by Jaitley, was part of the original file or not.

Meanwhile, the court turned down Batra's plea to stay IHF's May 23 AGM and elections, to be held in Kolkata. However, the court asked the IHF not to declare the results till further orders and keep the same in a sealed cover.

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