Thanks to an RTI sports enthusiast, Asian Games bronze medallist in roller-skating Anup Kumar Yama is now brimming with confidence of getting the prestigious Arjuna Award for this year.

To Hyderabadi’s delight, it became evident that Anup missed it out last year because of miscalculations with regard to deciding the eventual awardees.

For someone who happens to be the only medallist ever from India in a World Championship (he won a gold in Taipei-Taiwan in 2013), he had applied the previous four years for the Arjuna Award and was really optimistic in 2014, especially given his World Championship gold and also because of major changes in the selection criteria for the awards.

According to the Union Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, a point system was formulated to calculate an athlete’s medal achievements in the previous four years in international meets. It was also announced that 90 per cent weightage will be given to international meets and 10 per cent to the marks given by the selection committee for the assessment of the sports person, keeping in view factors like profile and standard of the discipline.

Ironically, this champion skater from the city topped the charts with the highest points last year and could have been a clear winner for the award as he won medals in the World, Asiad, Asian Championships to name a few.

“I was shocked to know that I got the highest points among all the sportspersons, but despite winning the world number one and the first-ever gold in world championship, I was ignored,” said Anup.

So, what are the options now? “Well, since it was a clear violation of the Ministry’s guidelines to deny me the award, I am applying again through the Sports Authority of Telangana and my National Federation this year with the hope of getting justice this time,” says Anup, as he embarked on a campaign on the social networking sites too to propagate his cause.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by V. V.Subrahmanyam / Hyderabad – July 26th, 2015