PALAKKAD: Kerala sports minister A C Moideen on Saturday criticised the roles of athletes P T Usha and Anju Bobby George in the controversy around P U Chithra’s exclusion from World Championship Athletics.
Speaking to media-persons after visiting the house of Chithra at Mundur on Saturday, Moideen said that the court found that there were anomalies in the selection of the participants to the world championship.
Moideen said the criteria for selection to the world championship were questionable. The minister said the selection list was prepared in secret and was published in the last minute so that there would be no scope for appeal. "It’s also suspected that Chithra was excluded to suit the interests of a few people," he said.
The sports minister also said that the government was ready to send Chithra for training in a foreign country and ready to provide scholarship.
Chithra reportedly had been attending the training camp in Ooty on the hope that she would be participating in the World Athletic Championship in London. The minister who reached Palakkad on Saturday morning waited for Chithra who arrived from Ooty at 1.30 p.m.
Speaking to the New Indian Express, Chithra said that she would like to be trained under coach N S Sijin of Mundur high school. She said the only difference from the national coaching camps was in relation to the food. In the national coaching camps, each participant is provided with protein rich food which costs between Rs 750 to Rs 1,000 everyday, she said.
Chithra said that she would continue to practice and hoped that if she got a job in Kerala, it would be beneficial for her family.
Meanwhile, Sijin said that there was a conspiracy to exclude Chithra from the beginning. He continued saying that her name was missing in the first list published for the Asian Athletics Championships. Subsequently, when the issue was raised through MP M B Rajesh, the athletics federation officials claimed that it was a “clerical error”.
Sijin said that even though the list for the world championships was prepared three days in advance, it was not published till the last minute. He called on the state government to take up with the Centre the issue of delaying the publication of the list so that in future it is made available at least 15 days in advance.
He said that Chithra suffered the same fate of Anu Raghav who was excluded from the Rio Olympics by vested interests.
Minister Moideen was accompanied by state sports council president T P Dasan, director of sports Sanjaya Kumar and CPM district secretary C K Rajendran. The chief minister and himself had taken up the matter with the Union sports Minister, said Moidheen.