Controversies mar awards selection

Controversies mar awards selection

By K.P. Mohan

DOUBLE DELIGHT: Bobby George and Anju George were in Wednesday named to receive the Dronacharya and Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna awards respectively.

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 15. Anju Bobby George has, as expected, been chosen to receive the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award for 2003. Husband and coach Robert Bobby George is among the four coaches selected to receive the Dronacharya award.

After the selection committees had finalised their choice nearly a week ago, the Union Sports Minister, Sunil Dutt, attested his approval to the lists on Tuesday but it was left to one of the panel chairmen, Maj. H.P.S. Ahluwalia to field questions related to yet another controversial list of awardees on Wednesday.

Sacked coach awarded

Sacked hockey coach Rajinder Singh is among the Dronacharya winners, with two other awards going to boxing coach Anoop Kumar, who trained a women's world champion in M.C. Marykom, and wrestling coach Sukhchain Singh.

Though there was hardly any challenge to the selection of Anju George for the prestigious Khel Ratna award — the highest sports award for a particular year that carries a cash component of Rs. five lakhs — quite a few debatable choices were made for the Arjuna Awards, not to speak of laid-down criteria being diluted across the board.

Anju was chosen ahead of Sourav Ganguly, Mahesh Bhupathi and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, among 12 other nominees for the award, for her bronze-winning effort at the World athletics championships in Paris last year. Rathore's turn will surely come next year, for he will probably be unmatched, with his Olympic silver won at the Athens Games.

It was natural only for Bobby George to get into the Dronacharya awardees list, something that he had looked forward to even earlier, but the choice of Rajinder Singh was not only controversial but also happened to be a calculated snub on the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) that had sacked him with just three weeks left for the Olympics.

Bobby George and Anoop Kumar did fulfil the criteria laid down by the Government, of having a trainee who had won a medal at a World championship event, but the same could not be said of the other two coaches.

Rajinder did have an impressive list of achievements for 2003, including the World junior title apart from the Asia Cup and the Afro-Asian Games titles, but he still could not meet the minimum criteria that included an Asian Games gold, in case one did not have a medal from the Olympics or the World Cup or World championships.

The explanations

The Joint Secretary in the Sports Ministry, R.K. Mishra, explained that since there was a paucity of recommendations meeting all the criteria it was felt that the World junior tournament could also be taken into consideration.

Sukhchain Singh Cheema, father of Palwinder Singh Cheema, was chosen for the award on the basis of the latter's success at the 2002 Commonwealth Games (gold), Busan Asian Games (bronze) and the 2003 Commonwealth championships. He also failed to make the minimum criteria.

Both Maj. Ahluwalia and Mr. Mishra had a tough time explaining some of the selections and omissions, especially those in athletics, where an Asian Games champion (shot putter Bahadur Singh) and two Asian champions of 2000 (discus thrower Anil Kumar and woman high jumper Bobby Aloysius) were omitted from the list once again.

The chairman of the Arjuna panel reeled off international competitions in Belarus and Vietnam to support the claims of a few of the awardees while there could be no explanation as to how an Asian Games silver winner (Bobby Aloysius), who was also a former Asian champion, could be ignored repeatedly. Heptathlete Soma Biswas and middle distance runner Madhuri Singh, both of whom have individual silver medals from the last Asian Games though they have never been Asian champions, have been preferred from the six athletes recommended by the federation.

Criteria for selection

The basic criteria for the Arjuna award stipulates that a sportsperson has to show excellence for the year concerned (in this case 2003) and show consistent performance and achievements during the preceding three years. Aloysius's Asian gold came in 2000, she had a silver in the Asian championships in 2002, a fourth place in the Commonwealth Games the same year apart from the Asian Games silver at Busan.

In the case of Anil Kumar, who had won a silver in the 1998 Asian Games, apart from the gold in the Asian championships in 2000, plus the bronze in the 2002 Asian meet and the Busan Asian Games, the omission was not related to anything other than merit, the officials explained. There had been allegations of indiscipline against the National discus record holder, who was being nominated by the Athletics federation for the third year in a row.

Bahadur seemed to have gone out of the race because of a doping violation in 2002. He was not considered because of this last year also and though Mr. Mishra pleaded that he could not divulge the entire selection process, it is believed that the Punjab Police shot putter was kept out of the purview because of the doping infraction.

The awards would be presented by the President at a function at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on September 21.

The awards list:

Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna (Rs five lakh): Anju Bobby George (athletics).

Dronacharya Award (Rs three lakh each): Robert Bobby George (athletics), Anoop Kumar (boxing), Rajinder Singh (hockey) and Sukhchain Singh Cheema (wrestling).

Arjuna Award (Rs three lakh each): Soma Biswas and Madhuri A. Singh (athletics), Pankaj Advani (billiards and snooker), M.C. Marykom (boxing), Koneru Humpy (chess), Capt. Rajesh Pattu (equestrian), Devesh Chauhan and Suraj Lata Devi (hockey), Akram Shaha (judo), Sanjeev Kumar (kabaddi), Maj. R.V.S. Rathore (shooting), Harbhajan Singh and Mithali Raj (cricket), Shokinder Tomar (wrestling) and Madasu Srinivas Rao (Paralympic Games).

Dhyan Chand Award (Rs three lakh each): Brig Lakbh Singh (athletics), Hardyal Singh (hockey) Mehendale Digambor Parasumram (physically handicapped).

Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad Trophy: Guru Nanak Dev University.

Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Award 2002 (Rs three lakh each): Lifetime achievement: Bula Chowdhury Chakraborty; Land adventure: Brian Dermot Kharpran Daly; Water adventure: Relu Ram Thakur.