Honour, dishonour...
The sorry saga this year around the national honours for sporting excellence, better known as the Arjuna Awards, had one last unsavoury twist in the tail.
Already besmirched by allegations of favouritism against Khel Ratna winner Ronjan Sodhi thrown around by woman discus thrower athlete Krishna Poonia, the gala occasion on Saturday was given a body blow when another awardee was yanked off the stage literally minutes before the ceremony was to begin at Rashtrapati Bhavan under the benign gaze of President Pranab Mukherjee. The athlete in question this time, triple jumper Ranjit Maheshwary, is alleged to have failed a test for banned substances at a national open championship in 2008 following which he was stripped of his medal. Details of this transgression emerged on the morning of the awards investiture and the sports ministry reacted by first ordering an inquiry into the charge and then asking Maheshwary to stay away from the occasion. Leave aside the lack of due diligence that obviously led to the fiasco, little thought was spared for the humiliation and disgrace heaped on the athlete who, for a decade and more, has been representing India at competitions around the globe and was a bronze medallist at the Delhi Commonwealth Games two years ago.
With the entire awards system under a cloud with candidates repeatedly making the grade ahead of other, better deserving contenders, it is yet another wake-up call to either make the occasion truly meaningful, or to do away with what has become an annual tamasha altogether. And spare a thought for Maheshwary’s wife and children, and what sort of explanation the naturally angry athlete would have had to offer them.
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