NADA Chairman: 'There is no transparency in what the BCCI does'

NADA chairman Navin Agarwal throws light on his work and shares his opinion on the BCCI’s practice of independent sample collection.

“We do not intend to send any athlete to jail,” says the NADA chairman.

From a stint in Jammu and Kashmir to another challenging assignment of `catching’ dope offenders in Indian sport, National Anti Doping Agency (NADA) chairman Navin Agarwal, is a busy man. He shares his views on his work.

Sending dope offenders to prison : That’s a wrong notion. We do not intend to send any athlete to jail. As of now only the athletes get punished. At times, the athlete is a victim rather than a culprit. The actual culprit also needs to be taken to task. Only some of the offences will be criminalized. The idea is to protect the clean athletes, who don’t want to dope but does so without his knowledge.

Plans to bring Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) under NADA : Every federation is autonomous. Most federations receive government funding whereas BCCI doesn’t need government funding. Just because you don’t take government funding doesn’t mean you can flout the rules pertaining to doping. Fundamentally everybody agrees that there should be no doping and they are open to dope testing. I don’t see any reason why they should be averse to NADA doing the testing. There is no transparency in what the BCCI does.

BCCI does independent sample collection : NADA is the only authorized body in India to do dope testing for domestic events. For any international event, the concerned international federation can set its own independent body. They may be doing some dope testing but we don’t have any control or supervision of that. I am not disputing (BCCI doing random testing) but it is not covered as per the rules prevalent in the country.

Federations supporting doping : Not federations. Maybe some individual in the federation supports them. If some individuals are doing such things in a clandestine way then the federation can take some action.

Status of Narsingh Yadav case : Narsingh tested positive but then before the NADA disciplinary panel he produced sufficient evidence for them to consider that it was a case of somebody sabotaging it. When WADA appealed to CAS, he was not able to explain his case properly. He did not appear before the CAS. The panel was of the opinion that he had more likely been doped rather than Narsingh himself taking dope. Only hope is if CBI comes up with some evidence on the basis of which the CAS decision can be overturned.