A three-member team that has been sitting on a probe into irregularities in handing out cash awards to undeserving coaches of medal winners in the 34th National Games has finally stirred ' it has asked all those associated with the event to appear for interviews on February 9 and 13, over two months after the scandal hit headlines.
The sports department team, headed by deputy secretary Aloius Lakra and including two deputy directors, issued a public notice today and asked sports outfits involved in the Games to be present at Sports Authority of Jharkhand (SAJ) office to help begin investigations.
"We have called players, coaches, association heads of all the outfits involved with the Games to appear in person for investigation/interviews depending on which we can resolve the controversy," Lakra told The Telegraph.
The cash reward became a bone of contention a day after the December 9, 2011 felicitation of National Games achievers when judo coach Sheelak Ram claimed that his association president and Congress MLA K.N. Tripathi had sidelined him.
Tripathi had allegedly nominated his brother Nand Gopal for the prize money while Ram coached the women's squad. Thereafter, some players of the state wrestling outfit spoke up against Shikha Sharma who was nominated coach by her brother and Jharkhand Weightlifting Association general secretary T.D. Roy, but allegedly played little role as mentor in the run-up to the Games. Sharma was set to get a cash prize of Rs 14 lakh.
Later, cycling coach Md Arshad Khan also accused the state cycling association of deliberately striking off his name from the recommendation list.
While these controversies raged, cheques for those involved were either cancelled or withheld, with NGOC pinning the blame on various sports associations that had forwarded the lists.
But the question remains why the government (sports department), which was giving away Rs 7 crore in cash prizes, did not feel it necessary to verify credentials?
"When the decision to give prize money to coaches was taken, we had recommended that the names be certified by athletes to establish the first point of authenticity," said an official who helped organise the Games in February 2010 .
Speaking to The Telegraph earlier this month, sports secretary Ajoy Kumar Singh, however, said the reason they relied on the NGOC was that they didn't have any means of verification of their own.
"The NGOC was involved in organising the Games. So, we empowered it to give us names out of sheer goodwill. We never thought there would be any controversy," he reasoned.
On December 17 last year, the probe team submitted its report, but the sports department called it "vague" and hence useless. The report was done in haste and reproduced articles published in the media. On December 20, 2011, director of sports Ganesh Prasad reinstated the probe with certain riders, but to no avail.
Will the probe make a headway this time? Lakra did not sound confident. "Nothing can be said now but we will try to assess from as many channels as we can."
He said the probe would not be limited to judo and weightlifting, the disciplines that were the first to be sullied by the controversy. "Training of 240 days will be the base criteria to determine coaches," he said, adding that all disciplines will be looked at.
But, the probe team will find it difficult to proceed. Of its three members, deputy director Santosh Krishna retired on January 31. And with the department facing an acute manpower crunch, no one has replaced him either.
There are no comments yet