Govt let down athletes: Boxers were sanctioned Rs 1 crore, had to make do with just Rs 13.8 lakh

Of this, two-thirds or Rs 2.08 crore was spent on the nine-member shooting contingent, mainly because five of them were financed to train in European countries. Only two, gold medal winner Abhinav Bindra and Avneet Kaur, got some assistance for buying equipment and ammunition.

The remaining Rs 1.11 crore was shared by 48 athletes, at an average of Rs 2.3 lakh per person, hardly the kind of investment that is required to produce medals.

Boxer Vijender Kumar, whose bronze-winning performance has already made him a beneficiary of cash rewards over a crore, was given just about Rs 2.5 lakh to prepare for the Games. And that included money for his support staff and pocket allowance.

A visit to the training camp before the Games at NIS, Patiala, had shown that the boxers were training without any of the technological equipment they had asked for. Despite the heat and humidity, there was no air-conditioning or air-cooling in the training hall. Even the table-fans they were using were hardly functional because of frequent power cuts.

Also training in similar conditions at the same venue in Patiala was the three-member wrestling team which produced one bronze medal by Sushil Kumar. They was sanctioned Rs 64 lakh but received less than Rs 10 lakh.

The story was repeated again and again. The financial assistance for 17 members of athletics team was to be Rs 44.37 lakh but what was finally given was just Rs 12.82 lakh, which averaged out to just about Rs 75,000 for each one of them.

The badminton team comprising Saina Nehwal and Anup Sridhar is also a case in point. Saina, who reached the quarter-final stage at Beijing beating the world number 4 on the way, has been making waves for quite some time and is widely believed to be one of the brightest talents on the Indian badminton scene in recent years. Yet all that she received in form of government support in her preparation for the Olympics after she qualified in May was air tickets worth Rs 2.5 lakh to enable her to participate in a few international tournaments and train in Malaysia. She was sanctioned Rs 2.76 lakh over and above this amount for various other purposes but that money was never released. Ditto for Sridhar who also got Rs 2.5 lakh worth of air ticket but nothing of Rs 9.47 lakh additional money he was sanctioned.