A few weeks ago, social media went into a frenzy over a ‘16-year-old’ Gaurav Mukhi becoming the youngest goal scorer in Indian Super League. Fans questioned AIFF’s age verification process as the Jharkhand lad was clearly looking far older than his registered age.
The AIFF then constituted an inquiry and even suspended Mukhi for six months without clearly stating the reason behind their move.
However, the discussion around age fraud soon died its natural death.
If one goes to any age group tournament, irrespective of the sport, in India, many man hours are spent talking about the menace and parents even come to blows when allegations and counter allegations are made. But nothing really changes.
However, last week, a group of 37 parents of badminton-playing kids moved a writ of mandamus in the Karnataka High Court for a clear directive to the Badminton Association of India to implement a policy for detecting and eliminating age fraud from the sport.
It would probably take years for a final verdict based on the petition, but this move by parents could be a good start to at least make a start in that direction of tackling the issue.
Where do federations stand
To begin with, let’s first understand where things stand in Indian sports.
In sports that require a mandatory registration process for any child to participate in national level tournaments, a birth certificate or any other documentary evidence is enough while for those sports where prior registration is not required, most of these documents are submitted during the event event and checking happens only if there is a complaint.
It was only after the Union Sports Ministry introduced the National Code against Age Fraud in Sports 2011 (you can read the provisions of the code here) in April 2010 that most federations started asking for a date of birth certificate, instead of any other document from the players. But that system is also not yet being implemented in full.
The Sports Code also mandated that all federations should give the athletes an identity card after verifying documents and medical tests, if required, that will serve as proof of their age for all tournaments. None of the federations have really bothered to implement this provision.
Additional reading: Indian football’s age-old problem isn’t going away anytime soon
The sports ministry on its part conducts a medical examination for age verification on every junior player representing the country in international events and have refused funding to those who were found over age.
But there is a problem even on that front. The medical tests for age verification are mostly inconclusive and in the cases like that of world junior championship silver medallist Siril Verma in 2015. The findings are questionable since he was found over age in the test conducted by Sports Authority of India, but the same test done in AIIMS by the player himself showed a different age.
The national federations have used such cases to hide behind the argument that the findings of these tests are untenable in the Court of Law and hence they cannot really take any action against players found over-age through medical examination.
These federations don’t really have the political will to find a solution to the menace as it would mean hurting a lot of state associations and even academies that are central to the survival of the sport while the sports ministry can’t force them to take any action but stop funding the athletes found guilty according to their system.
It is reliably learnt that over 20 per cent of medallists in the first Khelo India School Games were found to be overage following the TW3 tests and were left out of the scholarship list. However, almost all those players are still playing in their respective age groups in the tournaments conducted by the national federations.
Failed attempts
The All India Tennis Association recently formed a three-member committee to address the issue of age fraud following a number of complaints from parents but ended up hurting the process more by putting the onus on the complaining parents to produce proof of age fudging apart from paying Rs 2000 as a security deposit.
While parents will be more than willing to pay the amount, it is difficult for them to get documentary evidence to prove age fudging.
AITA’s fears that every disgruntled parent may end up complaining against age-fraud if they are not asked for documentary evidence as not unfounded. Players will more training age — the number of years they have trained and the kind of training they do — can look a lot bigger than their biological age.
In fact, parents of one of the former junior national champion in badminton used to carry a file with records of his mothers hospitalisation and his vaccination along with the date of birth certificate during his u-13 and u-15 to show that he was playing in the right age group and the skills he had acquired at that age and the his height were natural progressions.
So is there a solution to the problem?
Eliminating age fraud completely could be next to impossible but the menace can be curbed if the federations have the will to do so.
To begin with, the federations just have to fall back on the provisions of the Registration of Births and Deaths Act 1969 to make it mandatory for anyone participating in age group tournaments to submit a date of birth certificate registered within 12 months of birth (though the Act says it has to be registered within 21 days).
The Badminton Association of India had taken a huge step in that direction in 2015 when the then president Akhilesh Das Gupta issued a circular saying new players’ registrations could only be done if the birth certificates were registered in the same year.
But the pressure from state associations meant that the circular was withdrawn within a few days as most of them argued that the sport would “lose out on talented youngsters” as many parents still don’t have the awareness about registering the birth of their child immediately.
This argument in itself is flawed because no child can get an admission in even a pre-primary without a valid birth certificate. And even if some genuine cases do lose out on playing the sport, then that loss is worth it in the bigger picture.
It is even possible that parents could find a way around this provision as was proved in CBI’s Sports Integrity Unit report to BAI about Akash Yadav, whose date of birth certificate was from the same year of birth. However, the CBI team found out that the official whose signature was there on the certificate never worked in that department and while he was born on August 1, 2001 according to the certificate it was registered under section 8 of Uttar Pradesh Registrations Rules 2002 (A copy of that report is with Scroll.in).
The report also mentioned cases of three other players but no action was taken against any of the four and Yadav even represented India in a Asian U-17 championship last year.
Better verification system
The federations could also adopt a more robust system of document verification with the help of district and state bodies by physically validating the submitted birth certificates from the concerned registering authority and then holding them equally responsible for any age fraud among players registered through them.
The third and most important step should be create a panel of experts to study the documentation through interviews of players and parents of those players who are found over age through the medical examination and strict action should be taken against them if proved guilty.
During one of the meetings of Sports Ministry’s Government Observers, a few suggested a two-year ban on players found fudging their age. However, other members in the room vehemently opposed such a provision on the ground that players should not be punished for the fraud done by their parents or coaches.
But the question to ask is this: why should other players pay for that as many talented players lose out on much needed financial and systemic support early in their career as they are outplayed by overage players.
The Indian cricket board took the first step in that direction by announcing a two-year-ban on age cheats and it is time other federations also follow suit. The Table Tennis Federation of India had taken similar action against four players from West Bengal in 2016, banning three of them for two years and one for a year, following a report from CBI’s Sports Integrity Unit.
The parents of badminton players in their submission to the court have also given a detailed process of documentation and verification that can be implemented by BAI, which even other federations could follow. The process isn’t water tight and can be improved upon.
But that document could be looked at as a start and its high time federations showed the desire to get their houses in order.