Deafolympians demand to be treated at par with para-athletes

New Delhi, Aug. 2: The Deafolympians, who had staged a protest at the airport here on Tuesday for not getting a proper welcome by the sports ministry, have demanded that they should be treated at par with para-athletes.

The Deafolympians, who had won five medals including a gold in the Deafolympics held at Samsun in Turkey from July 18 to 30, had refused to leave the Delhi airport, protesting that no top official from the ministry came to receive them.

Later, they met sports secretary Injeti Srinivas and put forth a demand that they should be treated at par with para-athletes.

Virender Kumar (74 kg freestyle wrestling) was the lone gold winner for India and his coach Maha Singh Rao said that Srinivas has promised to put up the matter (treating Deafolympians at par with para-athletes) before a ministry committee.

“We met the sports secretary who is also the SAI director general and we put the demand that the Deafolympians should be treated at par with paraathletes and he has promised to put up the matter to a committee of the ministry to take a decision,” Rao of Guru Hanuman akhara said.

“We also put forward other issues like allowing the Deafolympians to use SAI facilities, consideration of Deafolympians for Arjuna Awards and financial incentives to these athletes,” said Rao, who is a Dronacharya Awardee.

Rao said his ward Virender is an Arjuna awardee and he would want another deafwrestler to be nominated for the coveted honour.

Asked about the protest at the airport, he said, “We were told about two events on our arrival. The athletes from Haryana were to meet the Haryana sports department director at 10 am. We also have been told that sports secretary would meet us and we came to know that sports minister was not well.

“But we did not understand why the sports secretary was not at the airport to receive us. Only a project officer of the SAI/Ministry was there to receive us,” he added.

India’s contingent, comprising 46 athletes, won a gold, silver and three bronze to be 26th in the overall medals tally