SATS head takes blame for abuse of power

Internal committe operated on orders of SATS chief

The blame of constituting an internal committee to authenticate merit documents of sportspersons has fallen on the shoulders of the Sports Authority of Telangana State vice-chairman and managing director who held the post in 2017-18. It was on the official’s order that the internal committee was constituted which was in violation of Government Order No 8.

Sources said the government had empowered SATS to validate the sports certificate. This means even if the government does not approve of the priority list of students applying for medical colleges, the SATS approvals will matter for candidates. This power was misused by the committee.

A SATS letter dated July 31, 2017, which is with this newspaper, clearly states that following the orders of VC & MD, SATS, the internal committee must complete the validation of sports certificates of students by August 5.

The committee comprised deputy director G.A. Shobha, incharge K. Manohar, administrator (water sports) Kabeer Das who are currently under the ACB scanner. It also comprised arrested deputy director G. Venkataramana, administrators G. Chandra Reddy (cycling velodrome), G. Ravinder (Kotla Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy stadium), L. Harinath (Lal Bahadur stadium), gymnastics coach, LBS, Brij Kishore, handball coach, SATS, M. Ravi Kumar with supporting staff Sunil Madhav, DEO, and K. Narasimha, office superintendent.

The committee was formed internally based on the order of the VC and MD SATS and it was during this time that priority list of students was prepared according to the whims and fancies of the members.

Meanwhile, a victim of the committee, student Bharathchandra Reddy sought information from the Youth Advancement, Tourism and Culture (sports) department through an RTI application if the government had approved the priority list issued by the SATS committee. The office replied: “Government have not approved any final priority list of candidates for admission in professional courses of engineering, medical and agricultural and other sports quota for the year 2017-18.”

This clearly indicates that the government had not approved the list of names that featured in the priority list issued by the illegal committee.