New Delhi: BJD MP Dilip Tirkey will raise the disqualification of two Odia sprinters, Srabani Nanda and Amiya Mallick, from Rio Olympics due to callousness of the Athletics Federation of India in the Rajya Sabha today.
The Rajya Sabha MP and former captain of Indian Hockey team yesterday had given a notice in this regard in the Upper House.
Notably, Srabani and Amiya had bagged gold in the one-day Indian Gran Prix, which was conducted to give Indian athletes a chance to qualify for the Olympics in August. However, the timings of the two Odia sprinters were recorded manually due to a sudden power failure at the start of the event.
Though Srabani created a new national record with a timing of 11.23 seconds in the women’s 100 m and met Olympics qualifying mark and Amiya with national record of 10.09 seconds in the men’s 100 m, their records were not accepted by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) due to manual timings instead of electronic timers.
The Nehru stadium, where the Indian Gran Prix was being organised, has back-up generators installed within the arena but there was no stadium staff to operate the 10 generators as Sunday was their off day.
Meanwhile, another BJD MP Bhupinder Singh has shot off a letter to the Union Sports minister demanding a re-test for both the Odia runners and also said that he would join Tirkey in raising the issue in the Upper House.