Selection criteria for India's Asian Games squads under scrutiny

NEW DELHI: India's Asian Games squads are facing fresh selection scrutiny with questions being raised over the criteria used in gymnastics, kurash and karate.

In gymnastics, Pranati Nayak is the lone athlete to be cleared. There is no explanation on why other gymnasts who earned nominative, by-name quotas from the Asian Gymnastics Union (AGU) were not considered. Following the 2026 Asian Championships, Nishka Agarwal earned a nominative all-around qualification while Pranati and Protistha Samanta secured nominative qualification as vault specialists. The 2025 Asian meet adds context - Pranati won bronze while Protishta finished fourth. The 2026 championships, held after June 20, fell outside the ministry's qualification window. But if the 2025 Asian event was used as criteria, then Protishta, too, should have made the cut. Protishta had India's best gymnastics result at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, finishing seventh and becoming the only Indian gymnast to reach the final. Pranati competed there injured and could not make the final cut. "The question is whether the framework was applied consistently for the Asian Games. If yes, then on that basis, Protishta and Nishka, along with men's gymnasts Tapan Mohanty and Yogeshwar Singh, also deserved consideration," said federation sources.

Kurash raises another question. India returned from the Hangzhou Games without a medal, yet a six-member team has been cleared after an initial decision by authorities not to send one. With no performance benchmark cited, the selection remains unclear.

Karate is equally perplexing. SAI had formed a committee and initially decided not to send a team, according to sources. Yet Alisha Choudhary and Chetan Bhatt have been named. The IOA barred the Karate India Organisation (KIO) from functioning as an NSF over unauthorised selection and other violations.

Complaint over failure to get horse-owner accreditation: Dressage rider Shruti Vora has written to IOA president PT Usha seeking urgent intervention in securing the crucial horse-owner accreditation and blaming the Equestrian Federation of India (EFI) for oversight.