The National Sports Awards will be presented by President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday amid the glitter and dignity attached to the function at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
The names of award winners, picked by a committee headed by badminton star Pullela Gopichand, were announced a week ahead of the function, which is also celebrated as the National Sports Day -- the birth anniversary of hockey wizard Dhyan Chand.
As has been the case for many years now, there have been murmurs of unhappiness by those who missed out. They want to know their crime for rejecting their claims.
Union Sports Minister Vijay Goyal has a philosophical reaction -- that someone or the other will miss out and they are bound to complain. He knows by the time the next awards are announced he may not be there as sports minister; even if he is there he will find another one-liner.
What is surprising is that he assured the complainant weightlifter Sanjita Chanu, who had gone to court challenging the awards selection, that her case would "definitely be considered next year." In the same breath he also said that "if contrary facts emerge, we will look into the matter".
This is the time of the year when one can be sure of a controversy over the selection of athletes and coaches for the National Sports Awards.
By and large, the courts are disinclined to go into the merits of selection. More than one high court took the easy way out of asking the national sports federations to look into the cases on merit and submit a report. One court even went to the extent of saying that it is not its job to sit in judgment on selection matters where so many parameters are involved and it comes into picture only if mala fide intent is proved.
Is there a way to make the selection of awards transparent and fool proof? As long as the award selection is subjective, some athletes will get away with murder.
In the early 1980s, Eddie Aibara, who was the head of cricket faculty at the National Institute of Sports (NIS) in Patiala was not selected for Dronacharya award and his pupils instead received it because of their proximity to politicians.
The then Executive Director of Sports at Sports Authority of India (SAI) obviously had not heard of Aibara, a classic batsman who played cricket for Hyderabad with the country's greats of the 1940s to the 1960s. The ED blindly followed the book to say that Aibara did not produce any cricketer in the preceding three years, forgetting that he was producing coaches for the Dronacharya award! Ask any Hyderabad cricketer of the era and he will swear by him for correcting his technique. The SAI technocrat went on to head a national sports federation.
The performance over a three-year period has become a convenient tool for the performers as well as the selectors to twist it to their convenience in accepting or rejecting a claim.
Mahesh Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna can have a genuine grouse. Both have credentials to be honoured, the former with Khel Ratna for winning 12 majors and the latter the Arjuna for winning his first Grand Slam title and his showing in Davis Cup. That they are not the blue-eyed boys the All India Tennis Federation can't be the reason for rejecting them.
The Khel Ratna is for the most outstanding performer of the year. Then, the selectors found exceptional circumstances to give the award to more than one. Last year Pusarla Venkata Sindhu and Sakshi Malik were rewarded for winning Olympic medals and Dipa Karmakar and Jitu Rai for their excellent showing at Rio. Then, there was no Khel Ratna awarded in 2008 and 2014 when the selection committee did not think anyone deserved it.
Over the years, the awards have become the exclusive preserve of Olympic athletes as the points criteria adopted is heavily loaded in their favour. Anil Kumble, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and Vangipurppu Venkata Sai Laxman were not considered good enough, despite their outstanding record as cricketers.
The only cricketers who received Khel Ratna were Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni and they could not be denied for obvious reasons. It is also a mystery why Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar were not considered for the Khel Ratna when the award was introduced in 1991-92. Gavaskar had finished playing a couple of years earlier and Kapil was still active.
Add to the missing list is Mithali Raj, an outstanding woman cricketer who has the highest number of runs to her name. The excuse that her performance came two months after the deadline is laughable as she has been playing for two decades.
In every Olympic year, the deadline rule was relaxed since the Games are held in July-August. The rule was junked even for Saina Nehwal. Bhupathi can have a legitimate grievance and ask whether Saina's Super Series titles have more value than his Grand Slams and also when Saina Mirza was rightly given Khel Ratna for being the No.1 doubles player in the world.
The joke doing the rounds in cricketing circles is that it is easier to get a Bharat Ratna than a Khel Ratna!
(The writer is a veteran commentator. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at sveturi@gmail.com)
(This story has not been edited by Social News XYZ staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Doraiah Chowdary Vundavally is a Software engineer at VTech . He is the news editor of SocialNews.XYZ and Freelance writer-contributes Telugu and English Columns on Films, Politics, and Gossips. He is the primary contributor for South Cinema Section of SocialNews.XYZ. His mission is to help to develop SocialNews.XYZ into a News website that has no bias or judgement towards any.