BAI to issue circular urging parents to come out clean to avoid harsh penalty
MOHALI: Two Rajasthan shuttlers were on Saturday barred from participating at the ongoing All India Under-13 Ranking tournament after the Badminton Association of India (BAI) secretary Sanjay Mishra claimed that there was concrete evidence against the duo of age fudging.
Reiterating BAI's zero tolerance against age fraud, Mishra, who landed in the city late on Friday night, said that the National Sports Federation will soon issue a circular requesting parents and coaches of suspected players to come clean to escape harsh penalties.
"So far out of the 12 suspected players, the federation found concrete evidence of age fudging by 2 players, both from Rajasthan, and their ids were immediately deactivated," Mishra told TOI after a meeting with the aggrieved parents here.
"In the next few days, the BAI will come up with a circular where we will give a time-bound chance to the parents/coaches of suspected players to come out clean so that the kids can avoid harsh penalties. In case they are found guilty later on, appropriate action will be taken against the offenders," the secretary assured.
"Having said that, the BAI also feels the players should be given a fair chance to present their side of the story before we take a call on the penalty. For now, the two players were withdrawn from the ongoing tournament, after this we'll have a gap of around two months to thoroughly investigate and filter out the genuine players for the next U-13 tournaments," he further explained.
Earlier on Saturday, Mishra's meeting with the aggrieved parents broke the impasse that made the ongoing tournament grab the headlines for all the ugly face-offs with the organisers.
"Whatever concrete evidence we had we acted on that, so as far as the federation is concerned, not a single offender will be spared. But we want to reiterate that the process takes time and the parents will have to cooperate with us as it's a collective fight against the menace of age fraud," he said.
On Friday, many of the aggrieved parents took to the Field of Play (FOP), thereby forcing the main round proceedings to be cut short. There was sloganeering against the BAI officials and the organizing committee by a section of the parents.
Mishra accepted that the concern of parents is understandable but at the same time reminded them that they can't take law into their own hands. "Whatever they did on Friday was out of frustration, but again they didn't set a good example. This could have been prevented."
"The parents on their part accepted their mistake of barging into the Field of Play (FOP) and halted the proceedings. It was their kids who had to bear the hassle for another day."
"There were allegations against BAI not acting against the offenders. But if the federation wasn't serious, we wouldn't have rushed to Mohali or our federation president and Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma took regular updates despite his state reeling under flood," Mishra said.
"All's well that ends well… the BAI and the parents are finally on the same page and the tournament will go ahead as scheduled," he added before rushing back to the airport.
