Young Talent denied a shot at the Guwahati National Games

[cooldude]

Small indifferences to Indian sports have made a big difference. And, the result of these is Indians’ failure to make the top grades in international sporting events. Here is another small incident that typifies the apathy to sports.

A LOT OF concern has been expressed over a billion-plus India’s inability to perform at par with countries much smaller and much less economically strong in Olympics, Asiad, Commonwealth and other international sports and athletic meets. Scores of reasons, including government apathy, poor training facilities and infrastructure and Indians’ mental make-up, have been cited as being behind the shoddy Indian performances in the international sporting arenas.

I would desist from going into all of them all over again and would instead point the public attention to one very innocuous incident, related to my son, who is participating in the ongoing National Games in Guwahati in the shooting event. Though a small matter, it brings out the attitude of the officialdom towards sports and sportspersons. Small bits like these add up to stonewall the Indian sports ambitions and the failure of our sportsperson to live up to the expectations of the countrymen.

To begin the story, my 18-year-old son has been into Trap shooting for a year or so. He is already a junior Renowned Shot of India. He secured the ninth position in the recently concluded National Shooting Championships held at New Delhi in the junior event. He represents Uttaranchal state.

Clay Pigeon shooting, which he does, is a highly technical and specialized sport, where lack of proper equipment can make a difference of a couple of Birds (shooting clay targets), and could make the difference between getting a medal and getting nothing. The most important equipment is the weapon that you are used to and one that fits you perfectly. Since these weapons are not available in India — and thanks to government policy of allowing import only after you have reached a certain level — a shooter often has to borrow from someone who already has one till the sportsperson reaches the level to import own weapon. My son has managed to do this time, but importing is a long drawn-out process. My nephew, who is current India No. 6 in Trap shooting, was kind enough to allow my son to use his weapon for the National Shooting championships because he uses a Sports Authority of India weapon himself.

When the time came to go for the Guwahati National Games, my nephew was refused permission by DCP Licensing, Delhi, to carry both the weapons — even after he being told that the other weapon was for his cousin, who does not have a weapon of his own and was allowed to carry only the SAI weapon. This put a spanner in the hopes of my son who had been practising with his cousin’s weapon. Finally, he had to go without a weapon. Feb. 11th, was the first day of the finals which is held over two days — 75 Birds on the first day and 50 Birds on the second day and the first six go in for another round of 25 Birds to decide the medals.

The Assam Rifle Association was kind enough to give him their weapon. Till the day before he left for Guwahati, he had been consistently shooting on an average 20/25 Birds. But, on the 11th, with a new weapon he shot 6/25, 11/25 and 13/25 and yesterday he managed an 18/25 and a 13/25. The Arms Act does not restrict a person from carrying more than one weapon. This happened only because my nephew’s licence is valid in Delhi. Hence, to carry the weapon beyond Delhi, permission was required by DCP Licensing, which he refused to give even on genuine grounds. If a person has more than one license and they are valid for the whole of India, then what is to stop that person from carrying his weapons to any place in India? For my son, it’s an opportunity lost forever. He called me from Guwahati and was sounding discouraged. I tried to encourage him by telling him to take it in his stride as it would make him tougher mentally. Now my question is: What are such officers doing at such posts and what gives them the right to play with a young and budding sportsman’s career? Can the DCP return the opportunity missed out by my son? Can he give the reasons for refusing my nephew permission to carry his own weapon for the sake of his cousin? Can anything be done so that others do not suffer on this account in future? The DCP has no idea as to how disheartening and distressing it can be and a person might lose confidence in his own abilities if he does not perform well for whatever the reason. It is very hard to explain to a youngster as to how he was consistently shooting in the 20s and how suddenly he has come down to six. Well, after all the adversities, though he could not manage an individual medal, he has been able to contribute enough to get a team silver medal along with the other two members, for Uttaranchal state. This is the kind of system through which India is supposed to produce world champions. What a farce holding the 2010 Commonwealth games and trying to bid for the Olympics.

[kanwar76]

Hi Cooldude,

Welcome to the forum. Sorry to hear about your son's misfortune. This just shows the mental state of babu's. Don't know when we are going to get out of this bureaucracy S$it.

-Inder

[mundaire]

Hi Cooldude!

Your son's case highlights the major lacunae in the system here, which leaves everything to the discretion of officials who are seldom interested in the ethics/ morals and/ or the spirit of the law - in stead they would much rather concentrate on making money and lobbying the powers that be for securing their next plum assignment!

India is a free country and we have been free for more than half a century now. Yet, our arms laws treat all our free citizens with suspicion as potential criminals/ terrorists!

Every free citizen has the moral right to keep and bear arms, to enjoy sporting pursuits and/ or defend himself/ herself and his/ her family and property if faced with a threat - until and unless he/ she proves himself/ herself unfit by having a criminal history/ mental problems that may cause him/ her to be a danger to society.

The bedrock of jurisprudence is innocent until proven guilty, yet our arms laws treat every gun owner as potentially guilty unless proven innocent! Furthermore the ban on imports of guns and ammunition serves only to restrict the Indian gun owner to purchasing government made shoddy products! When everything can be freely imported into India today - why this restriction on the import of guns?

Sorry for rambling slightly off topic back there... back to your post - Why just shooting, every sporting endeavour in India is dogged by politics and bureaucratic wrangling, who suffers? The sports persons as individuals and the sport as a whole!

I do hope you will write to media persons of this incident as well... It is a story that I think many papers would be interested in carrying and it is one that should most certainly be brought to the public's attention!

Cheers!
Abhijeet

[kanwar76]

Fantastic post Abjijeet

Keep on doin it dude...

-Inder

[danish21]

Very sad to hear this.... these babus should be hanged by their b***s. This is why we indians are so backward just because of there babus & corrupt polititions.

Danish

[HSharief]

All this talk and problems, yet, no effort of activism to provide a solution. We can find lot of people who want to put an end to this yet, we just sit in our cozy arm chairs and post high fallutin messages on web forums crying about how bad it is for us, but do not provide a single solution.

I had said in the past, we should form a core group from within us who have access and knowledge of how to go about changing this system. Nothing has happened to that suggestion. Not even a "Keep dreaming Sharief". Maybe we can even suggest this as a project to some MBA and/or Law students as part of their research thesis. Just imagine the boost to sportsmen and business if the sporting gun business is easier. Its a win-win for the real players, not for the Neta-Babu-Ahole combine.

[penpusher]

Cooldude,

Sorry to hear about what happened to your son.He is young and surely will get another chance.Tell him not to get disheartened.Now lets come to what happened.

As per the rules,a member of a shooting club,is entitled to carry a firearm of the club,on the basis of a written permission of the President of the club.For carrying the firearm beyond the state borders a certificate of an SDM is sufficient.So your nephew did not need to apply to the DCP for carrying the firearm.All that he needed was a letter from the SAI authorising him to carry the firearm and a letter from the SDM or any other Executive Magistrate of a similar rank or higher,authenticating the letter and the purpose for which the firearm was being carried.

For a person to carry a firearm beyond the area for which it's valid,a Transport license is required.A specific form is prescribed in the Arms Rules for the TL.For this your nephew should have applied in the given form to the DCP and any rejection would have been appealable to the prescribed appelant authority under the Arms Act.


So ,all in all,an unfortunate but avoidable situation.


penpusher

[mundaire]

All this talk and problems, yet, no effort of activism to provide a solution. We can find lot of people who want to put an end to this yet, we just sit in our cozy arm chairs and post high fallutin messages on web forums crying about how bad it is for us, but do not provide a single solution.

Sharief,

Well deserved criticism... am afraid at my end, I have been sitting on my backside on the incorporation of GOAI (as a non-profit society) for more than a month as well... Will get right on it, an update on that in a separate post (hopefully real soon).

Cheers!
Abhijeet

[shahid]

Wish all succes in the future for your son cooldude. he will come up in scores soon. He highly deserves agun that suits him.

The process to end all this high handedness and misuse of arms control act is begining with our planned PIL. Join in, we are very serious now. Things are getting from bad to worse and the ignorance on part of our officials is really troubling the sportsmen now. Things need to be set straight.

[mehulkamdar]

Cooldude,

I know how you feel. In 1984, as a protest against the then new laws br9ught in by India's tyrant of the time, Indira Gandhi, I decided to give formal shooting up for good. My generation lost a huge opportunity to do well in a sport that was dear to our hearts and it is clear that the passage of time has only made matters worse, not better in any way. I would suggest that there be a multi pronged approach that the members of the IFG couls atart to get activism going on this issue - this is a suggestion and members are requested to step in and offer their own views and ideas on this to get things going:

1. Cooldude or his son would have to start a petition on Petitiononline to the President and Prime Minister of India on the above matter and also send e-mailed copies of it to the NRAI. This cannot be started by anyone else on your behalf - I hope you understand this - as you and your son are the affected parties. We can and will support you on this as an organisation. Links should also be sent by you to the various newspapers in India - both regional as well as national. We could also help you with the wording of the petition - but it would have to primarily be YOUR effort

2. IFG could support the petition - members and those whose spouses and friends are interested in the shooting sports could support the petition by signing and sending the mails off - this would also be a clear indication of how many people are really interested in doing anything on an active basis

3. Members with spare time could volunteer to spread the word about this petition around and especially to post on other forums, communities like Orkut or wherever else they may be members to promote this petition

4. I hope that our friends in the media give some prominence to this petition if and when it is up. We need this help and even a small insert on page 7 in a newspaper could bring more people to speak on our behalf and to join the petition effort

5. We could get the support of large shooting communities but I would like to keep this an Indian affair as it is going to be an official petition to the President and PM of India. If anyone thinks that our many foreign well wishers should be brought in to participate in this activism, please suggest what reasons you may have - at the moment I am not sure if that would help this cause in any way

6. Such an effort could be a starting point for actiuon by IFG on gun ownership in India. This would show us clearly where we stand and in a different sense, it would also take our group from an e-forum to an activist one, albeit a web based one for the moment. Hopefully, from this point on, we could build a mass of support and go from strength to greater strength

7. If anyone is involved with other sports here, I would urge them to bring in support from sportspeople participating in non shooting sports. The fact is that despite the popularity of the shooting sports thanks to good performances by Indian shooters, this is a miniscule portion of the Indian sporting community. If we could get the support of, for example, India's cricket players or hockey players, that would boost our cause severalfold. And there is a reason why other sport supporters need to support us - the shooting sports are not the only sport that sees skullduggery in India. Every sport in India is treated as shabbily as possible. Officials get to travel abroad at government expense with their families while funds are not offered to sportsmen and women for basic needs. We need the support of the other sports in order to have greater numbers and they need to have our organisational support as a tight and active group that is ready to expend some sweat in organising a massive e-mail campaign

8. I know that this has been said before but I would like to invite Cooldude to edit his post and remove the word "weapon" in it. By using this word we play into the hands of the anti gunners who seek to have everything that has anything to do with our sport banned. A weapon is something that is used to do harm and in the target shooting sports there is no harm done to anything - clays are not living objects and neither are paper targets. Please use proper terminology. It does not take time to throw out the language of those who seek to oppress us from our subconscious. I do wish, in particular, that this word does not make it into the petition if the petition ever becomes a reality

9. I hope that all members here accept this idea. If any member here feels that this is not a good idea, please be open and give your reasons why. We have some of us who are in a position to and have offered to commit financial resources for a PIL. Abhijeet has already been spending large amounts of time and money in running these forums as a personal effort. Others may not be able to do that and could help with their time. And particularly busy members who support the cause could take less than five minutes to add their names to the petition and click on the send button when they find five mintues. Whatever little step anyone takes in support is a welcome one and every little bit of help would be gratefully acknowledged and welcome

10. Finally, this could be a very big first step in the direction that we could move if we do things right. My measure of success would be if every memebr here manages to send their names on the petition and get at least one more member to sign it. If, with some effort, we manage to get 5 more people for each member to do this, we would certainly have the eye of the authorities whom we are trying to talk to. On the tiger petition that Sat, Mack The Knife and I worked on before any of us was an IFG member, a total of about 2000 e-mails - not even a petition - drew the attention of the government and brought in a committee under Dr Suneeta Narayan to look at the decline in tiger numbers. A dedicated, long term campaign on guns could be vastly more effective

Over to you ladies and gentlemen. Please step in and offer your suggestions and help.

Cheers!

[penpusher]

Excellent post Mehul.

So we have two options.One is a petition and the other is a PIL.

Might I suggest that first we petition the govt and if this yields no result then we go to the Supreme Court.This would also strengthen the legal action the we might be forced to resort to.Otherwise their is a danger that a hostile judge just might throw it out on the first hearing as being frivolous.

The reason behind hiring a top lawyer in the Supreme Court is that at least he/she would be listened to.Otherwise,there are so many pending cases in the Supreme Court, lawyers are given very little time to argue their case.Good lawyers cost money.Lots of it.

penpusher

PS-Will try to prepare a rough draft of the petition

[Yasho]

Friends.
It was quite disheartening to read about the insensitve attitude of officers of IPS cadre at DCP level.
Today, its his son, tomorrow we could face the same music.
Well, that how it is in all corridors of the govt.
A few suggestions to present our case with the concerned authorities and powers that be:
1. As there is no manufacturer of compressed air guns in the country, import should be allowed duty free. This is not a threat to the security of the country. It will give a boost to shooting in the country as a sport.
2. Naveen Jindal, a MP from Haryana and a National level skeet shooter can and should be approached to spearhead this campaign.
3.With the 2010 CWG around the corner and the govt having begun the countdown, the govt should be made to realise the importance of sports to channelise the enormous energy of the youth which otherwise gets wasted or spent in non-productive manner/activities like addiction to drug, laid back attitude etc.etc.
4.Still over 10 days to go for presentation of the budget. Letters to the FM with copy to the Sports Ministry, asking the FM to consider allowing unhindered import of target sports/shooting equipment. When otherwise also the government issues arms licenses, whats the problem in allowing equipment which is not manufactured in the country.
5.The govt is also planning to bid for the 2014 asian games. So all the more reason to allow the sports persons to prepare themselves betetr to compete at the international level.
BTW, unlike cricket, shooting is held in Olympics, Asian and Commonwealth Games(CWG), whereas cricket is more of a marketing/commercial sport with controversies. A sport like hockey is also played by more nations than cricket.
I am ready to put my signatures on any representation/petition that IFG plans to submit.
Good Luck and All The Best.

[penpusher]

This is a reflection of how the Law enforcement agencies feel about the Indian gun owners:- http://uppolice.up.nic.in/tender_test/m ... (Jul%2006)


"IX. CONTROL OF FIRE-ARMS In the world of today one of the important factors which affects the handling of law and order situations is the availability of fire-arms with those who create law and order situations. The leniency of the Arms Act of 1959 as compared to the Arms Act of 1878 and its still more lenient implementation has created an undesirable situation. For several years past the use of fire-arms has become frequent in Delhi, UP, Bihar, West Bengal. In the Sadar Bazar riots of May 1974, there was constant sniping at the police. In communal riots in U.P. police has often been fired upon. The Arms Act needs a thorough revision."

A good way to deflect any criticism about their own role in preventing such incidents and when they start,in controlling them.Have they even bothered to fund out if the guns they had been fired upon with, were legal or illegal ones

penpusher

[mehulkamdar]

Thank you penpusher. My thinking is that the first step would be a petition as that requires only minimum effort from us from a financial standpoint. I hope Cooldude agrees to filing this as it is his son who was affected. If he does not agree to do this, then we shall have to find a different reason and file a petition with a different bent. With your vast legal knowledge, this should be a perfect way to get things started.

We also need to find a senior lawyer who would be heard as you rightly suggest. Do we know of any senior lawyer who is a shooter or is the father of a prominent shooter? If there were any such gentleman/lady, they would be the right people to contact. Hopefully, as this exercise progresses, we shall find such a person and then persuade them to work with us. We do have time to make enquiries and work on this gradually and, hopefully, the petition would give us more publicity and bring people who share our views to our side.

Cheers everyone!

[cooldude]

Small indifferences to Indian sports have made a big difference. And, the result of these is Indians’ failure to make the top grades in international sporting events. Here is another small incident that typifies the apathy to sports.

A LOT OF concern has been expressed over a billion-plus India’s inability to perform at par with countries much smaller and much less economically strong in Olympics, Asiad, Commonwealth and other international sports and athletic meets. Scores of reasons, including government apathy, poor training facilities and infrastructure and Indians’ mental make-up, have been cited as being behind the shoddy Indian performances in the international sporting arenas.

I would desist from going into all of them all over again and would instead point the public attention to one very innocuous incident, related to my son, who is participating in the ongoing National Games in Guwahati in the shooting event. Though a small matter, it brings out the attitude of the officialdom towards sports and sportspersons. Small bits like these add up to stonewall the Indian sports ambitions and the failure of our sportsperson to live up to the expectations of the countrymen.

To begin the story, my 18-year-old son has been into Trap shooting for a year or so. He is already a junior Renowned Shot of India. He secured the ninth position in the recently concluded National Shooting Championships held at New Delhi in the junior event. He represents Uttaranchal state.

Clay Pigeon shooting, which he does, is a highly technical and specialized sport, where lack of proper equipment can make a difference of a couple of Birds (shooting clay targets), and could make the difference between getting a medal and getting nothing. The most important equipment is the weapon that you are used to and one that fits you perfectly. Since these weapons are not available in India — and thanks to government policy of allowing import only after you have reached a certain level — a shooter often has to borrow from someone who already has one till the sportsperson reaches the level to import own weapon. My son has managed to do this time, but importing is a long drawn-out process. My nephew, who is current India No. 6 in Trap shooting, was kind enough to allow my son to use his weapon for the National Shooting championships because he uses a Sports Authority of India weapon himself.

When the time came to go for the Guwahati National Games, my nephew was refused permission by DCP Licensing, Delhi, to carry both the weapons — even after he being told that the other weapon was for his cousin, who does not have a weapon of his own and was allowed to carry only the SAI weapon. This put a spanner in the hopes of my son who had been practising with his cousin’s weapon. Finally, he had to go without a weapon. Feb. 11th, was the first day of the finals which is held over two days — 75 Birds on the first day and 50 Birds on the second day and the first six go in for another round of 25 Birds to decide the medals.

The Assam Rifle Association was kind enough to give him their weapon. Till the day before he left for Guwahati, he had been consistently shooting on an average 20/25 Birds. But, on the 11th, with a new weapon he shot 6/25, 11/25 and 13/25 and yesterday he managed an 18/25 and a 13/25. The Arms Act does not restrict a person from carrying more than one weapon. This happened only because my nephew’s licence is valid in Delhi. Hence, to carry the weapon beyond Delhi, permission was required by DCP Licensing, which he refused to give even on genuine grounds. If a person has more than one license and they are valid for the whole of India, then what is to stop that person from carrying his weapons to any place in India? For my son, it’s an opportunity lost forever. He called me from Guwahati and was sounding discouraged. I tried to encourage him by telling him to take it in his stride as it would make him tougher mentally. Now my question is: What are such officers doing at such posts and what gives them the right to play with a young and budding sportsman’s career? Can the DCP return the opportunity missed out by my son? Can he give the reasons for refusing my nephew permission to carry his own weapon for the sake of his cousin? Can anything be done so that others do not suffer on this account in future? The DCP has no idea as to how disheartening and distressing it can be and a person might lose confidence in his own abilities if he does not perform well for whatever the reason. It is very hard to explain to a youngster as to how he was consistently shooting in the 20s and how suddenly he has come down to six. Well, after all the adversities, though he could not manage an individual medal, he has been able to contribute enough to get a team silver medal along with the other two members, for Uttaranchal state. This is the kind of system through which India is supposed to produce world champions. What a farce holding the 2010 Commonwealth games and trying to bid for the Olympics.

I would personally like to thank all those who took time to read and give there valuable suggestions and I am game for anything because it is high time something is done so that these type of situations do not arise in future. Cosidering it is India, I know it's a steep uphill task but then you have to start somewhere, sometime.