Sport - Sports : General

Anti-doping panels set up

NEW DELHI: The Union Government has constituted three panels related to anti-doping measures in sports.

The National Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel will be headed by Mr. Dinesh Dayal, retired Additional District Judge, Delhi, and the Anti-Doping Appeals panel will be headed by Mr. C.K. Mahajan, retired High Court judge.

The Therapeutic Use Exemption Committee (TUEC) will comprise three eminent doctors, drawn from the Safdarjang Hospital and the AIIMS, New Delhi.

The National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA), formed in November 2005, but only activated recently, is expected to start functioning from New Year’s day. It was to have become functional three months earlier, but procedural issues delayed its launch.

Even now there is little clarity about the number of National Sports Federations (NSFs) that have responded to the NADA communication and its set of rules circulated last July. There is even more ambiguity about which of the NSFs have actually concurred with the NADA rules and incorporated them into their constitutions/rules and regulations/anti-doping guidelines.

Unless the NSFs incorporate these anti-doping rules in their rules, implementation could run into trouble.

The Athletics Federation of India (AFI), for instance, had written to NADA on September 23 to state that it was agreeable to NADA conducting out-of-competition testing, but in-competition testing would be the responsibility of the federation.

In both cases, the AFI stated, the ‘results management’ and disciplinary procedures would be carried out by the federation. The National Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel and the NADA rules will lose much of their relevance, if the federations were to handle ‘results management’.

A NADA spokesman said on Wednesday that "quite a few" of the NSFs had concurred with the rules circulated by the NADA. He added that the draft rules were also approved by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) last July.

An IOA spokesman said that the IOA was in general agreement with the rules circulated and since they were based on the WADA rules, nothing much needed to be done. However, a few points in respect of the National Games were discussed with the NADA and WADA and they would be sorted out soon.

The panels:

Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel: Dinesh Dayal, retired Additional District Judge (Chairman), Sudhir Nandrajog (lawyer), Jasmeet Singh (lawyer), Dr Anand N. Malviya, Dr Vikas Ahluwalia, Dr. N. K. Khadiya, M. P. Ganesh (hockey Olympian), Kamaljeet Sandhu (former athlete) and Dinesh Khanna (former badminton player).

Anti-Doping Appeals Panel: C. K. Mahajan, Retired High Court Judge (Chairman), Dr. S. Ramakrishnan, Cdr. Nandy Singh (hockey Olympian) and Indu Puri (former table tennis player).

Therapeutic Use Exemption Committee: Dr C.D. Tripathi and Dr J.C. Suri (Safdarjang Hospital) and Dr H.L. Nag (AIIMS).

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