NEW DELHI: The Badminton Association of India (BAI) is forming a committee to conduct a thorough investigation into multiple age fraud complaints at two recent sub-junior events and is reportedly looking at imposing a ban of a minimum two years on those found guilty.
PTI reports that multiple cases of age-fudging emerged during the All India Sub-Junior under-13 ranking tournament (June 19 to 25) in Hyderabad and at the ongoing U-13 event in Mohali, prompting Sandeep Heble, a member of the Age Fraud Committee, to shoot off a letter to BAI, urging it look into the matter.
“It is not an easy decision. We have to be 100 percent certain before we take any action. We already have an age fraud committee, but now we will form a team, including the state secretaries, so that a proper investigation can be done to gather evidence,” BAI secretary Sanjay Mishra told the newswire.
“Once we have concrete evidence, we will make a detailed list of the guilty players and ban them for 2 to 3 years from all domestic events, including district, state, national ranking.”
Aggrieved parents have also approached the organising secretary Tejinder Bedi in Mohali, protesting against the participation of over-age players in the tournament and demanding immediate action. There were reports that Bedi had decided not to award ranking points in the Mohali tourney.
However, BAI said cancellation of ranking points is federation’s prerogative and it has decided to let the tournament go ahead as per plan but will conduct 2-3 events more to help the affected player make up for the points once the matter is probed properly.
“We have time for around two months after this event. I have asked the chief referee to make a list of all players of questionable age. After investigation, if we find that lot of players were over-aged, then we will conduct 2 to 3 additional ranking tournaments so that the genuine kids can get a chance to gather ranking points.”
PTI further reports
Age-fudging has been an issue for many years now. In most cases, unscrupulous parents and coaches are complicit in producing fabricated documents like falsification of of birth certificates, school certificates, passports, or even Aadhaar cards to get an undue advantage in age category events.
In 2014, BAI banned five junior players after they misrepresented their birth dates during the nationals.
Two years later, the issue again reared its ugly head when the Sports Integrity Unit of the CBI submitted a report to the BAI saying that four junior players had altered their age records.
In December 2018, it got even further aggravated when a group of 37 parents of budding shuttlers moved to the Karnataka High Court, asking for a directive to BAI to implement a policy for detecting and eliminating age fraud from the sport.
