Government makes amendments to award schemes

A retired judge of either Supreme Court or High Court will now head the Selection Committee for Arjuna Awards as the government has revised the schemes of various awards it present to sportspersons.
From now onwards, a sportsperson of eminence or a sports administrator or sports expert belonging to para sports will also be a member of Arjuna Awards' selection committee, the proceedings of which will be videographed.
As per the amendments brought in by the government, not more than one sportsperson of eminence/coach from a particular sporting discipline shall be a member of the Selection Committee, in order to avoid any bias in favour of a particular discipline.

Nomination agencies are expected to send nominations of most deserving sportspersons, coaches irrespective of whether they have applied to them for awards.
"Last year, Selection Committee for Arjuna Awards headed by Kapil Dev made several suggestions for improving the scheme of Arjuna Awards. Most of the suggestions have been accepted by the Government," a Sports Ministry release said.
In the marks criteria, more marks will be given for medals won in individual events. For team events, marks will be computed taking into consideration strength of the team.
For Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, Arjuna Awards and Dronacharya Awards, the weightage for performance in sports events has been reduced from 90% to 80% and weightage of marks to be given by the Selection Committee for factors like profile and standard of sports events has been increased from 10% to 20%.

"This will increase say of the Selection Committee in the process of selection and give sufficient value to the profile and standard of sports events in determination of awardees," the release said.