Varsity-level archery winners not sent for inter-university contest

Sanket Ghosalkar said,“I had won gold medal in the Indian category at the Mumbai University’s archery competition. Each category has two teams,a boys team and a girls team and each team consists of four players. There were four students who won at the Indian category including me,however,none of us was sent for the All India inter-university archery competition. This is really unfair.”

Nitin Poojary,another student,said,“Even if our scores were low we had won the competition and were entitled to go for All India inter-university competition. And there is no such stipulated rule to restrict us from participating at the All India inter-university level.”

Not only this but students allege that one of the students who had participated in re-curve category of archery was sent to Kurukshetra for compound category. Amod Jha said,“One of the students who have been playing in re-curve category was sent in the compound category team. These two categories are different as different kinds of bow and arrows are used. This only shows that students are being selected through influence.”

Students also allege that such kind of bungling by University’s sports department has become a regular affair. “Last year not a single team was sent for the All India inter-university archery competition due to the varsity’s goof up. Last year,Mumbai University’s archery competition took place after the All India inter-university competition. As a result,not a single student represented Mumbai University at the inter-university level,” said Ghosalkar.

U N Kendre,director of sports and physical education,Mumbai University,said “ Winning the competition is a different thing and meeting the standards is different. Students were supposed to achieve 80 per cent of the total score of 720. However,these four students had achieved only 50-55 percent. The girls team in Indian category was better so we decided to send only girls team for the competition. These rules were decided by the University’s sports committee.”

Students have now approached the Shiv Sena students’ wing,Bhartiya Vidhyarthi Sena (BVS),seeking help in the matter. “We have written to vice-chancellor (VC) of MU and also met him on Thursday. VC has assured that he look into the matter and help these students. If the university fails to help these students,then we will have to take up the matter,” said Pradeep Sawant,a university senate member from BVS.