The Arjuna Awards selection committee, while sticking to its original recommendation of 15 athletes for this year’s award, also made several recommendations to the Sports Authority of India on Tuesday to avoid a repeat of this year’s controversies.
Besides limiting the number of awardees to 15 under all circumstances, the committee, led by cricketing legend Kapil Dev, also recommended limiting the number of nominations from every sports federation.
“Never before has so much discussion gone into the prospects of a para-athlete as this time. Winter games, para-sports are very important for us and if one of their athletes is on the short-list for the awards, then there must be a representative from their side to guide us.
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“We have also given some recommendations, as sportspersons, to SAI on what can be done in future. I may understand 8-10 games, not 50, and it would be unfair to deny someone only because I, or others, don’t understand his game,” Kapil said.
SAI director-general Jiji Thompson assured that the recommendations would be forwarded to the Sports Ministry and SAI would try to include them from next year in the awards process.
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Number of awardees must be limited to 15, under all circumstances.
Number of recommendations from national sports federations must also be limited to maximum 3-4.
Henceforth, a para-athlete must be a member of the committee as an expert.
Three more athlete members must be added to the committee so that there is more sporting expertise on board.
Disciplines should be judged by the number of participants and degree of competition.
The marking system for awarding athletes, started this year, must be considered only till the short-listing stage. The marks must not be a criterion for the awards itself.
There must be no marks for an athlete when the list comes to the awards committee and the selections must be left to its discretion.
The entire proceedings of the committee must be video-recorded .