NEW DELHI: Duped of hard-earned money and false promises of participation at an international event, hundreds of school students and their parents had a harrowing time at a city hotel in the national capital when their visas for France didn’t arrive on time for participating at the 19th ISF World School Gymnasiade in Normandy from May 14 to 22.
About 140 students and their parents were cheated of Rs 2.5 lakh each by the derecognised School Games Federation of India (SGFI) after they waited anxiously at Hotel Centaur near the Delhi International Airport, awaiting for their visas to arrive so that their wards can catch a 2am flight (Saturday early morning) to Normandy to compete at the Gymnasiade.
The parents protested and created a ruckus at the hotel lobby, prompting authorities to call the Station House Officer (SHO) of the IGI police station. The students were part of the 273-member Indian contingent scheduled to participate at the Gymnasiade. Around 40 students, coaches, technical delegates and officials had already left a day before for Normandy from Mumbai, as their visa application was processed by the Consulate General of France in Mumbai.
Rest of the contingent members were scheduled to leave from Delhi by a 2am flight from the IGI. But, despite waiting for the whole day at Hotel Centaur, the SGFI couldn’t provide the participating students and technical delegates their visas, which led to some heated arguments between the parents, hotel staff and SGFI officials. Later, the IGI police took SGFI’s public relations officer (PRO), Gaurav Dixit, into custody for further interrogation. Some of the parents accompanied the police party to the station to lodge a formal complaint against SGFI president V Ranjith Kumar and secretary Alok Khare for fraud and cheating.
TOI had exclusively reported in its edition dated April 27 that the country’s premier school sports body – despite its derecognition by the sports ministry in December 2020 – had continued to use the emblem of the Government of India as well as the logo of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) on its letterheads to fool innocent students and their parents nationwide in collecting crores of rupees as participation fee for competing at the Gymnasiade. A total of 68 school sports teams from around the world will participate in the meet.
The SGFI has been under suspension since December 2020 after the ministry declared its December 29, 2020 elections held in Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam town as ‘null and void’ for breaching the provisions of the sports code, 2011. The SGFI presently has two factions – one headed by president V Ranjith Kumar and secretary Alok Khare which is demanding funds for the Gymnasiade – and the other led by working president Asarpal Singh and secretary general Vijay Santan. The SGFI had earlier been derecognised by the ministry for alleged irregularities in its functioning, including holding it responsible for the death of a promising 15-year-old Delhi footballer, Nitisha Negi, during the unsanctioned Pacific School Games in Adelaide, Australia in December 2017.
In the latest episode, the SGFI had collected funds from the sports and education departments of the states and UTs, and even directly from the parents of the selected athletes for the Gymnasiade, by using the letterheads bearing the emblem of the Govt of India as well as the SAI. According to sources, it had demanded Rs 2.5 lakh each from the participating students selected through the national-level trials at three different venues on March 20 and 21. It had allegedly collected Rs five crore for the Gymnasiade.
