A day before the ceremony to confer the Dronacharya Award for 2015 is scheduled to be held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan here, the Delhi High Court on Friday directed the Union government to include the name of former chief national wrestling coach Vinod Kumar in the list of awardees.
Allowing the plea of Kumar, who had challenged the recommendation to give the prestigious award to coach Anoop Singh instead of him, Justice V.P. Vaish said there were discrepancies in Singh’s selection and the selection committee had not considered the accolades conferred on Kumar.
“Discrepancy appears on their account which should not be expected from the committee deciding the awardees for an award of this prestige,” said the Court in its eight-page order.
The Court rejected the contention of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports that since Kumar had already been given due recognition by way of the Dhyan Chand Award in 2012, he was not eligible for the Dronacharya Award in 2015.
The argument raised by the Ministry that Singh was not a chief coach since May this year was also rejected by the Court, which observed that the award pertained to the achievements for the period of 2011 to 2014.
Reducing the score of Singh, the Court said the marks accredited to him, based on the medals of Geetika Jakhar trained by him, could not be added to his score. Forty points given to him should have been deducted by the selection committee and his score should have been 337.5.
The Court expressed displeasure at the government’s failure to maintain the records pertaining to the nominees of Dronachaya Award for 2015 properly.
Kumar, who was the chief national men’s freestyle coach from November 2010 to April 2015, said in his writ petition that the selection committee had shown an abuse of discretionary powers by selecting Singh instead of him despite Singh having scored fewer points.
