DSRA approaches Delhi High Court for additional Dronacharya award for Jaspal Rana

According to sources, the Delhi State Rifle Association (DSRA) was badly disenchanted with the government’s decision to exclude Rana as one of the important recipients of the prestigious Dronacharya Award. The Delhi State Rifle Association had on Friday approached the Delhi high court and expressed regret, and demanded justice for the highly experienced Junior Shooting International Coach Jaspal Rana.

It may be recalled that gold medalist and Asian Champion Jaspal Rana is currently the Junior Shooting Coach for Indian junior shooters. Heis credited for bringing laurels for the country in various international competitions and also for exceptionally molding the junior shooters like  Manu Baker and Anish Bhanwala. It is being felt by some quarters that he fully deserved this coveted award. His name was recommended three times by the chairman of the National Rifles Association of India.

In a tweet,  the leading advocate fighting sports cases wrote: Earlier today i.e. on the 24th August I appeared before the Hon’ble DHC (Delhi High Court) on behalf of DSRA seeking directions to @ India Sports to confer an additional Dronacharya Award to the most deserving nominee@ jaspalrana2806. HC has directed Sports Ministry to produce entire file pertaining to this years Dronacharya Awards on 27th August.

The National Rifle Association of India Raminder Singh wholeheartedly welcomed advocate  Rahul’s tweet, further tweeting in response “Finally Sir, I’ ve been sending the name of Junior Shooting Coach Jaspal Rana three years in a row.” He further expressed his solidarity through a tweet: ”Anything I can do i am a call away. Merit in sports also extends to Coaches and Officials so long as they work and produce the results.”

It may be remembered that under the outstanding training of junior shooting coach Jaspal Rana, the junior shooters Manu Baker and Anish Bhanwala and many others have brought gold and other medals in various prestigious international shooting competitions and brought laurels for the nation. Shooting Coach Jaspal Rana works hard and tours the world for various competitions and ensured that our junior shooters performed exemplarily.

Last year the junior shooters under Jaspal’s outstanding coaching produced extraordinary results in the Asian Games, Khelo India, Common Wealth Games and also in ISSF international competitions and bagged several medals. Jaspal’s daughter Devanshi Rana too bagged Golds in Khelo India and ISSF, the international championship in Australia. Baker, Saurav Chowdhary, and Bhanwala were the most distinguished medal winners.

It seems to some that international shooting gold medalist and coach Jaspal Rana has been deliberately overlooked. This is despite that he is an outstanding coach. He has assisted in the winning of many medals for the nation in India, Asian, Commonwealth, and ISSF games. He was also recommended for coveted Dronacharya Award thrice by National Rifles Shooting Association, as per its chairman Raminder Singh.

According to one member, of the 12 member selection panel of the national sports awards, Jaspal Rana was actually ignored for this year’s Dronacharya award after his proteges, including Manu Bhaker and Saurabh Chaudhary, mentioned him only as their mentor in the official records. According to a member of the selection panel, none of his wards have declared him as their coach while filing the required affidavits to come under the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS). While Saurabh had mentioned Amit Sheroen as his coach in the official records, Manu and Anish Bhanwala had named Suresh Kumar and Harpreet Singh respectively.