Kolkata: Doping scandal is not new, 687 Indian athletes have faced ban in the past. India faced a huge set back to its Olympic dreams when wrestler Narsingh Yadav and shot putter Inderjeet Singh were banned by the National Anti Doping Agency (NADA). In 2004 weightlifters Sanamacha Chanu and Pratima Kumar faced a ban. A repeat of the same offence took place in 2010, when Chanu missed a spot in Common Wealth Games squad.
In a report, NADA admits that the Olympic year of 2012 marked a spike of 176 sportsperson being banned for doping. According World Anti Doping Agency (WADA), India ranked third worldwide in doping violations in 2014. The two countries above India in the list are Russia (148 cases) and Italy (123 cases). Athletics had the highest number of doping violation cases in India (29 cases), followed by power lifting (23 cases) and weight lifting (22 cases).
After India’s embarrassing high rank in doping violators worldwide, NADA has decided to tightened its monitoring system. In a statement issued in New Delhi, NADA said in the year gone by it conducted 151 tests. NADA has decided to conduct a test for mostly all national level games for seniors where doping was prevalent.
In the discipline of athletics, 1122 tests were conducted by NADA during the year 2016 out of which 23 tested positive. The number of sanctions imposed by NADA disciplinary panels have gone up from 17 in 2015 to 28 in 2016 in the athletics discipline.
In shooting, NADA has collected 123 dope samples in 2016 but no anti—doping rule violation was observed. No incidence of doping was observed in shooting during 2015 as well. NADA is expected to test more than 4000 samples with an increase in the number for priority disciplines of athletics, weightlifting, boxing, cycling and football.
This steps are surely going to reduce the rank of India in doping violation claimed by WADA. Hopefully, in terms of anti-doping, India will see better days.
(With inputs from PTI)