Bangalore: HC Withdraws Skater Sharanya Mahesh's Ekalavya Award
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore (VM)
Bangalore, Jul 14: The Karnataka high court has withdrawn the Ekalavya Award conferred on 19-year-old Sharanya Mahesh from Mangalore in roller skating category for 2010.
Instead, the court in its order has instructed the award committee to honour H A Prajna from Mysore with the Ekalavya award.
Sharanya Mahesh
Prajna filed a petition in the court stating that she had more points than Sharanya and thus was eligible for the Ekalavya award. In this regard, Justice Abdul Nazir passed an order to honour Prajna at a sports meet.
The court also took the sports board to task for goof-up and advised it to carefully analyze the medals, participation of sportspersons and then come to a conclusion regarding conferring of Ekalavya awards.
In 2010, both Prajna and Sharanya had sent applications for Ekalavya award in roller skating category. As per the rules, one should have represented the state for five consecutive years, and Prajna was eligible in this regard as Sharanya did not participate in 2007 nationals.
When it comes to points, Prajna topped by scoring 455 as against Sharanya who scored 315. "Despite this, Sharanya was honoured," said Prajna in her petition.
While investigating in detail, it came to light that the officials did not take into account one event in which Prajna had won. If this was taken into consideration, Prajna’s points would have raised to 625.
Considering these instances, Prajna had asked approached the court for justice, which ruled in her favour and annulled Sharanya's award.