NADA to conduct dope tests at Maha Athletics meets: AFI chief

The National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) will be conducting dope tests during the two-day Maharashtra State Senior Athletics Championship, beginning here from Tuesday.

This was announced Sunday by the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) president Adil Sumariwalla at a media briefing here. Sumariwalla is also the president of the Maharashtra Athletics Association.

Sumariwalla also said the AFI has made it mandatory that for every state meet there will be dope testing including the ones for the juniors and the funding is being done by the centre.

"There are a couple of things happening -- which is pushed by the AFI, one is that for the first-time ever there will be a dope control in a state-championship in Bombay (Mumbai). NADA has confirmed three people will be coming. This is something that the AFI has been pushing for a very long time," Sumariwalla said.

"We have zero-tolerance to doping and we pushed government into saying that (in) every-single state meet, there should be a dope control. The problem we face is starting at an early age, junior, state and district-level. It is happening at inter-railway, inter-police and inter-Services meet. But this menace (of doping) has to stop and we are very serious about it," he added.

Recently the Sports Ministry, on a request from the AFI had asked the NADA to conduct dope tests for all state meets.

Accordingly, NADA officials were present during the recently-held Kerala State Athletics meet to monitor the athletes.

Sumariwalla also informed that he is pushing for a legislation on "criminalisation" of doping."