New Delhi, April 23 (IANS) All India Council of Sports (AICS) President Vijay Kumar Malhotra on Monday requested Sports Minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and Indian Olympic Association (IOA) President Narinder Batra to take up strongly at all forums the issue of dropping the shooting discipline from the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
Malhotra's letter to Rathore has come a week after National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) President Raninder Singh demanded a boycott of the 2022 Games.
In his letter, Malhotra wrote: "Archery won maximum number of medals in the Commonwealth Games 2010 in New Delhi, the discipline was dropped from 2014 onwards. Now that India is winning maximum number of medals in shooting, the discipline has been dropped from 2022 onwards."
"Now that India is emerging as a power house in badminton, boxing, wrestling and weightlifting, it will not be a matter of surprise if any one of these disciplines is dropped from 2026 onwards," Malhotra added.
Malhotra also mentioned that there is a systematic approach to deprive India of medals.
"First various events from shooting disciplines were dropped and now shooting has been dropped altogether. If archery was retained in 2014 and 2018, India's medal tally would have gone up," he said.
The veteran BJP leader also hoped that India emerging as one of the biggest economies and representing half of the 2.10 billion combined population of Commonwealth countries, would be able to exert diplomatic pressure on the Commonwealth Games Federation to protect the interest of the country.
