World silver-medallist Amit Panghal and therefore the seasoned Vikas Krishan were on Monday nominated for the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award by the Boxing Federation of India, which picked only Olympic-bound names as its nominees for the annual honours.
The BFI has nominated world bronze-winning trio of Lovlina Borgohain (69kg), Simranjit Kaur (64kg) and Manish Kaushik (63kg) for the Arjuna awards. Of these, Borgohain has won the planet bronze twice, the foremost recent being last year.
For the Dronacharya awards, the BFI has finalised the names of national women’s coach Mohammed Ali Qamar and assistant coach Chhote Lal Yadav.
“The nominations of the athletes and coaches are on the idea of their performance during the last four years,” the BFI said.
The 24-year-old Panghal (52kg), also an Asian Games champion, has not won any national sports award. He was being nominated for the Arjuna award for the past three years but wasn’t considered by the choice committee due to a 2012 “inadvertent” dope offence.
“He is allowed to compete for the country and his medals are celebrated. He deserves to be honoured also ,” BFI executive R K Sacheti told PTI.
Last year, the BFI had vowed to stay nominating him till the time his name was considered. The doping violation happened when Panghal was undergoing treatment for chicken pox in his youth category days.
“Youth level ki galtiyan to sab jageh maaf hoti hain. I didn’t roll in the hay intentionally. I only took a drugs prescribed to me without knowing the results . i’m hopeful i will be able to be considered,” Panghal had told PTI during a recent interaction.
He had also written to Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju, demanding a change within the selection procedure of the awards, calling for an end to self-nomination and therefore the process of getting a committee pick the winners.
