On Wednesday, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) announced that Pakistan will travel to Bengaluru next month for the South Asian Football (SAF) Championship after the neighbours were drawn in the same group. This came close on the heels of Pakistan’s hockey team declaring their intention to travel to Chennai in August for the Asian Champions Trophy, provided they secure enough funding for the trip. In-between these two announcements, India’s bridge team travelled to Lahore – in the peak of recent political upheaval in Pakistan – where the players claimed they were ‘treated like royalty’.

AIFF president Kalyan Chaubey, a BJP member from West Bengal, said: “They (Pakistan) were included in the lottery (draw) only because we got confirmation on their participation.”

Last week, the Pakistan Hockey Federation said its secretary general Haider Hussain had written a letter to the country’s Sports Board, seeking an NOC from them to travel to India. In a video message, Hussain said: “Pakistan will definitely travel (to Chennai).”

Officials from the football and hockey federations said they are bound by the FIFA and International Olympic Committee rules, which forbid a country from discriminating against athletes from any country. Four years ago, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) even suspended India’s hosting rights for global events after the government did not grant visas to Pakistani shooters, who were to compete in a World Cup in New Delhi.

Being a non-Olympic sport, cricket is not governed by IOC rules. And with the International Cricket Council not imposing itself in the ongoing tussle between the Indian and Pakistani cricket boards, it has led to a serious logjam. While the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has remained steadfast in its stand that it won’t send a team to Pakistan for the Asia Cup in September, the Pakistan Cricket Board has in turn said they will not travel to India for the World Cup, which begins in October.

Earlier this month, PCB chairman Najam Sethi told that the ‘BCCI needs to convince the Indian government for the team to travel to Pakistan’. “We at PCB tend to go to our government and persuade them to allow us to go to India. We want to play in India. But then the government gives us this political argument that looks like it needs to be reciprocal. Otherwise, you know, we’ll be criticised roundly by our critics in Pakistan. Similarly, I think the BCCI needs to stand up and go and tell the government that ‘hey, please don’t bring politics into it. This is just a game. Allow us to go to Pakistan’,” Sethi had said.

While Pakistan’s football and hockey teams have said they will travel to India, it remains to be seen if they manage to secure visas in time for the tournaments. When asked whether issues like visas and security for the visiting Pakistani team have been addressed, Chaubey replied: “It is the right of every country in the region to compete in the South Asian Championship. It is not the prerogative of a football federation to secure visas and provide security to a country. The federation’s admin department will look into it and coordinate with the relevant ministries.”