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HS Prannoy, one of India's top badminton players, has questioned the selection criteria for the Arjuna Awards while also expressing his disappointment at being ignored again in the nominations sent to the government by the Badminton Association of India (BAI).
HS Prannoy took to Twitter to vent his frustration on being denied a nomination for the second consecutive year.
The ace singles player was part of the Indian team that won the Gold medal in the mixed team event at the 2018 Commonwealth Games (CWG). HS Prannoy had also bagged a bronze medal in the men's singles event at the 2018 Asian Badminton Championships held in Wuhan.
But BAI has ignored his credentials for the second straight year, by nominating Sameer Verma for the Arjuna Award in the men's singles event. Apart from Verma, the promising men's doubles pairing of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty have also been nominated for the award.
HS Prannoy's disappointment stems from the fact that Sameer Verma doesn't seem to have the same degree of accomplishments as the former. Although Verma gave some good performances in 2018, even reaching the semi-finals of the BWF World Tour finals, he was not even part of the Indian squad at the CWG or the Asian Championships.
Last year as well, HS Prannoy had felt let down at not being considered for the Award when Sai Praneeth was nominated ahead of him. The latter went on to make the nation proud by winning a bronze medal at the 2019 World Badminton Championships.
Parupalli Kashyap comes out in support of HS Prannoy
In response to his tweet, HS Prannoy received support from fellow singles player, Parupalli Kashyap. The veteran also questioned the system behind applying for the award.
A lot of other sportspersons have also expressed similar sentiments in recent months. Vijender Singh, an Olympic bronze medalist in boxing, while speaking to Sportskeeda had mentioned that he almost felt that he was begging while applying for the Arjuna Award.
Asian Games gold-medalist Amit Panghal had also written to the Sports Minister recently questioning the process of sending an application for the award.
"The current process is that a sportsperson has to send application and then sports committee selects on the basis of these applications. Award selection is also based on discriminative decision of sports committee members who hold no accountability", Panghal wrote.
Panghal, who was not considered for the Arjuna award in the last two years due to an 'inadvertent' dope violation in the past, has been nominated for the prestigious Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna this year.
