Madras high court deprecates practice of giving star status to cricketers
Chennai: Pointing out that in our country, cricket players alone are given star status whereas other sports persons are ignored, the Madras high court has said this kind of step motherly treatment is to be stopped both by the Central and state governments and this practice has to be deprecated forever.
A division bench comprising Justices N. Kirubakaran and S. Ramathilagam made the observations while passing interim orders on a petition from a physically handicapped person, who won medals in national and international events, challenging an order of the authorities terminating him from the post of day watchman.
The bench said the petitioner won 41 gold medals, 19 silver medals and 17 bronze medals in the international, national and state level sports meet, including 4 gold medals, 2 silver medals, 1 bronze medal and 1 brass medal in the international level. But he has not been given due recognition. However, in our country, cricket players alone are given star status. They enjoy patronage of the governments whereas other sports persons are ignored. It is very unfortunate that other sports persons other than crickets are not recognized both by the Central and state governments and they are not even received well while they return to their mother land after winning an international events/games. "This kind of step motherly treatment is to be stopped both by the Central and state governments and this practice has to be deprecated forever", the bench added.
The bench said all sports persons should be encouraged uniformly irrespective of game. Recognizing only the cricketers and celebrating them only would give a wrong picture to the children forcing the children to show interest only in cricket. A uniform policy has to be adopted, so that, children would show interest in all the games and they could be evenly encouraged in all fields, the judge added and suo motu impleaded the Union Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports and Sports Development Authority and posed six queries to be answered by them. The judge posted to March 21, further hearing of the case.
The queries are : 1) Whether all the games are treated equally and the sports persons involved in all the games are uniformly recognized?. 2) What is the allotment of amounts made by the Central government and state government for development of various games?. 3) What are all the benefits given to the achievers in various games in Tamil Nadu as well as in India? 4) What are all the gifts including allotment of houses and appointments given to the cricketers in recognition of their achievement in their filed in India and Tamil Nadu? 5) Is there any other sport person other than cricketer given the Padma Awards? And 6) Whether any other person other than cricketer like Sachin Tendulkar, has been nominated as a Member of Parliament?
