It's been more than 10 months since Olympic bronze medallist Vijender Singh bid goodbye to amateur boxing and turned professional. But the sports ministry was the only one to probably have not seen this news!
This was the reason why India's most celebrated pugilist continued to figure in the ministry's medal list for the Rio Olympics till recently. Vijender's name figured in the list of Target Olympic Podium Scheme's (TOPS) beneficiaries till this week, despite the ministry updating the list of TOPS athletes on a regular basis.
Vijender's name was promptly included in the list of 102 athletes when the TOPS committee, under the chairmanship of BJP Member of Parliament and secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India Anurag Thakur, was formed in 2014. All these names were added because they were thought to be Rio medal hopefuls and thus were eligible for government funding.
Vijender was offered Rs 75 lakh from the TOPS corpus of Rs 40 crore, but the Haryana pugilist shocked everyone by turning pro in June 2015, ruling himself out of the Olympics as he was no longer eligible to represent India.
The ministry never cared all these months to strike off his name from the TOPS list and earmark his funding to other sportspersons who were in the waiting list for the TOPS.
However, it was only after the keen interest shown by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in knowing about the country's preparedness for the Rio Olympics that the ministry went through the names of TOPS athletes and realised that Vijender still featured as a medal hopeful.
Fearing embarrassment, the ministry dropped Vijender's name from TOPS beneficiaries on Monday as the PMO had instructed the ministry to submit the list of athletes who have been identified as medal prospects.
The ministry also dropped Mandeep Kaur (athletics), RMV Gurusaidutt (badminton) and Sharath Gayakwad (para-swimmer) from the TOPS list but the decision to drop their names was purely taken on performance-basis.
While Mandeep, member of the Delhi CWG gold medal-winning women's 4x400 metres relay squad, was excluded as she has not been attending national camps regularly, Gurusaidutt's ranking took a massive dip from career high world No. 19 to current 78 due to a series of injuries. Mandeep and Gayakwad were getting Rs 30 lakh each, while Dutt was drawing Rs 60 lakh from TOPS.
There are a total of 118 athletes, who have been receiving TOPS assistance till the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Out of them, 56 athletes are contracted till the Rio Games. So far, 70 athletes have qualified for the Rio.
