From a stint in Jammu and Kashmir to another challenging assignment of ‘catching’ dope offenders in Indian sport, National Anti Doping Agency (NADA) chairman Navin Agarwal has been a busy man. He shares his views on his work.
Sending dope offenders to prison : That’s a wrong notion. We do not intend to send any athlete to jail. As of now they only get punished. At times the athlete is a victim rather than a culprit. The actual culprit also needs to be taken to task. Only some of the offences will be criminalised. The idea is to protect clean athletes, who don’t want to dope but does so without his/her knowledge.
Plans to bring BCCI under NADA : Every federation is autonomous. Most federations receive government funding whereas BCCI doesn’t need it. Just because you don’t take government funding doesn’t mean you can flout the rules pertaining to doping. Fundamentally everybody agrees that there should be no doping and they are open to dope testing. I don’t see any reason why they should be averse to NADA doing the testing. There is no transparency in what the BCCI does.
BCCI does independent sample collection : NADA is the only authorised body in India to do dope testing for domestic events. For any international event, the concerned international federation can set its own independent body. They may be doing some dope testing but we don’t have any control or supervision of that. I am not disputing (BCCI doing random testing) but it is not covered as per the rules prevalent in the country.
Federations supporting doping : Not federations. Maybe some individual in the federation supports them. If some individuals are doing such things in a clandestine way, then the federation can take some action.
Status of Narsingh Yadav case : Narsingh tested positive but before the NADA disciplinary panel he produced sufficient evidence for it to consider that it was a case of sabotage. When WADA appealed to CAS, he was not able to explain his case properly. He did not appear before CAS. The panel was of the opinion that more likely he had been doped rather than he himself taking dope. The only hope is if CBI comes up with some evidence on the basis of which the CAS decision can be overturned.
