On Monday, 26 October, the gates of the Air Force Sports Complex on Lok Kalyan Marg stayed shut. Maintenance staff had been told, verbally, not to report. Two contract workers who turned up for the canteen were sent back at the gate. Inside sit a nine-hole golf course, a swimming pool used for training, courts, a gym and two restaurants that serving and retired officers have used for decades. The former Air Chief, who retired on 31 October, missed the customary golfing-out.
This is the latest move in a sequence. The Centre took physical possession of the 15.20-acre Jaipur Polo Ground in June. The Delhi Race Club lost its 53 acres in August. The Delhi Gymkhana Club, on 27.3 acres, has been told to vacate and is contesting it in the Delhi High Court: one neighbourhood, one ministry, one list of targets. The pattern is deliberate, and it deserves to be read as one.
A misplaced sense of security
The stated reason is to strengthen and secure defence infrastructure, along with public purpose and governance projects. Security is a serious word. Used loosely, it stops meaning anything. No threat assessment has been published. Nobody has said what will be built, or where. The Tribune records that the purpose behind reclaiming the Air Force land remains unclear. A government that cannot say what it will build cannot call the building a security necessity.
Consider the ground reality. An open polo field and a golf course beside the Prime Minister’s residence make a near-perfect buffer. Density is low, sight lines are long, and access is easy to control. Stand-off distance is what protects a high-security zone, and concrete in its place shrinks it. The Centre also told the High Court that it would do nothing to the polo turf, and would only finish demarcating it from the adjoining golf course. If the ground mattered to security, the turf would be dug. If it does not, the stated reason has no work left to do.
There is a further oddity. The sports complex belongs to the very service that the defence argument is meant to serve. A civil ministry is shutting an Air Force facility inside an Air Force station, in the name of defence. Whatever finally rises on the site, that logic needs explaining. Congress leader Pawan Khera has alleged that the closure punishes the Air Chief for raising uncomfortable questions. The charge is unproven. It also won’t go away while the purpose remains undeclared.
Flimsy reasons, and a long fuse
Look at the calendar. The Air Force land notice dates to 2017. Notices went out that year to five properties, the Polo Ground among them, and nothing happened for nine years. A MoHUA official has confirmed that the current move rests on that old notice. A danger that could wait nine years was never an emergency.
The Gymkhana tells the same story. Reports speak of Rs 47.59 crore in revised ground rent dues. That is a revenue dispute. Governments settle such disputes through assessment, negotiation and, where needed, adjudication. They do not need to take 27 acres and dislodge a membership to close an account.
When one purpose is asked to carry defence, governance, public interest and revenue all at once, it carries none of them. Reasons that shift with the audience raise a question about what lies underneath. Newslaundry argued that a story of elites hogging public land was an easy sell to a willing media, and that the Gymkhana campaign was pitched exactly that way. Lutyens’ acreage is valuable. Applause from a crowd that dislikes clubs is cheap. The real intent may be possession, or signalling, or both. What is plain is that the declared reasons do not explain the pattern. That is the cynicism in this strike: a purpose written on paper and a different one pursued on the ground.
What the city loses
Clubs are easy to caricature. They are also where a city does its quiet work. The Gymkhana’s Staff Welfare Association went to court because its members’ livelihoods are at stake. At the Air Force complex, contract workers were barred at the gate. These are cooks, greenkeepers, lifeguards and bearers, and nobody has said what happens to them.
For serving officers, veterans and their families, such places hold the social fabric of a service. The mess habit that begins in a regiment finds its second home in these clubs after retirement. A capital that shuts the few green recreational spaces left at its centre, with no announced plan to open them to anyone else, loses the place and gains nothing in return. Nobody has declared that these acres will become a public park.
Polo, the easiest target
Polo has been hit hardest. The Indian Polo Association has lost a ground in the heart of Delhi. A sport that lives on turf cannot be moved in a season. A ground takes years to prepare, and a ground needs stables, grooms, farriers and fixtures around it. Polo entered the Indian Army through its cavalry, and the armoured regiments still carry that lineage. It teaches horsemanship, nerve and team tactics at speed. It is also expensive, which makes it a convenient symbol of privilege. Removing it costs the country a living military tradition and buys no security. The Centre has said it will not dig the turf. If that is true, the ground can remain a ground.
The government’s case
A fair reading must hold the other side. This is leased state land. The Gymkhana lease goes back to 1928, and the Centre invokes a lease clause that allows it to resume land for public purposes. The Supreme Court sent aggrieved members back to the Delhi High Court instead of deciding the matter. The Centre has assured the court that it will not take forcible possession without due process, and at one stage the High Court declined interim protection. Prime land near the seat of government is scarce, and the state may ask for what it needs. The dispute is about proportion, procedure and honesty. It is not about whether the state has any right at all.
Nothing here needs a fight. Six things would settle most of it. Publish the security rationale parcel by parcel, redacted where it must be. Say plainly what will be built, and where. Leave the Air Force its own facility unless a defence need is shown. Give polo a permanent home in Delhi on a long lease. Treat the staff fairly, whatever happens to the land. And let the courts finish before any machine moves.
The gate on Lok Kalyan Marg was shut on a verbal instruction, with no reason given. That is the detail worth holding on to. A government is entitled to reclaim its land. It is not entitled to ask the country to take security on faith while it refuses to explain. Security rests on public trust that the state means what it says. A fairway can be cleared in a week. That trust takes far longer to grow back.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lieutenant General A B Shivane, is the former Strike Corps Commander and Director General of Mechanised Forces. As a scholar warrior, he has authored over 200 publications on national security and matters defence, besides four books and is an internationally renowned keynote speaker. The General was a Consultant to the Ministry of Defence (Ordnance Factory Board) post-superannuation. He was the Distinguished Fellow and held COAS Chair of Excellence at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies 2021 2022. He is also the Senior Advisor Board Member to several organisations and Think Tanks.
