Orissa High Court today directed Hockey India to allow Odisha men’s and women’s team to participate in the senior national (A division) championships after the team was barred from participating over not providing player details within the stipulated deadline. Responding to a petition by Hockey Odisha for allowing the men’s and women’s team to participate in the senior national championship scheduled this week, justice KR Mohapatra of Orissa High Court in an interim order asked Hockey India to allow the teams to participate.
The 10th senior national hockey championship for men’s will be held between Jan 23 to Feb 2 at Jhansi city of Uttar Pradesh. Similarly, the women’s championship will be held between Jan 30 and Feb 9 at Kollam of Kerala. However several States including Odisha, Assam and Jammu and Kashmir were left out from the championships as they could not register details of players like date of birth and medical certificate(to track fitness) before the deadline (Dec 31 for men, Jan 8 for women) in the federation’s member unit portal.
With the State sponsoring the national men’s and women’s hockey teams and Bhubaneswar coming up as hockey capital of India, Odisha’s exclusion from the national tournament had drawn sharp criticism. The State government spent Rs 82 crore for the 2018 men’s World Cup held in Bhubaneswar.
Hockey Odisha secretary Pratap Satpathy said the association could not have given the particulars by December 31 as they wanted to ensure that none of the selected players are injured. “The portal wants details of players’ shoes size, jersy size and several other details. Can a team be selected a month before the tournament? If we select a team and some of the players are injured what do we do? It would be difficult for us even to select 18 players,” said Satpathy.
{{/usCountry}}Hockey Odisha secretary Pratap Satpathy said the association could not have given the particulars by December 31 as they wanted to ensure that none of the selected players are injured. “The portal wants details of players’ shoes size, jersy size and several other details. Can a team be selected a month before the tournament? If we select a team and some of the players are injured what do we do? It would be difficult for us even to select 18 players,” said Satpathy.
{{/usCountry}}Satpathy further said Hockey Odisha was not even acquainted with the newly-created portal. There should have bee some sort of training session for state units. We had informed the sports department about the difficulties and sought their intervention. As we did not get any response, we approached Orissa High Court,” said Satpathy. He also questioned how the CAG team was allowed to register on the portal on January 15 while it was December 31 for others.
Odisha sports secretary Vishal Dev welcomed the HC orders.