IOA clears Saina’s father’s CWG accreditation finally

Indian badminton player Saina Nehwal has set aside the protocol to play for the country and threatened to withdraw from the Commonwealth Games, starting in Gold Coast on Wednesday, when her father’s name was deleted from the Indian team’s official list.

However, her threat has worked and her father’s name was cleared by the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) on Tuesday in a hurry bringing a bad precedent to the opening of the games. Already the Indian team has been facing drug tests en masse owing to doping incidents earlier.

Fearing another controversy, IOA has cleared Harvir Singh’s CWG accreditation after Saina wrote to them earlier in the day that her father should be allowed.

In her tweet immediately after the ugly incident, she tweeted: “Surprised to see that when we started for CWG 2018 my father was confirmed as the team official and I paid the whole amount for that but when we came to the games village his name was cut from the team official category.. and he can’t even stay with me.”

Soon she followed with another tweet saying, “He can’t come to my matches and he can’t enter the village nor he can meet me in anyway…what kind of support is this.” She said she was not informed earlier. “If his accreditation is not cleared as an official, I am not going to play the matches,” Saina said in her email.

Saina won the London Olympics bronze medal and a regular team member in many CWG and Asian Games. Once his name has been cleared, she tweeted:”Thank u so much @ioaindia for the support and help sorting out my father’s accreditation card in such short notice ..Hopefully it will b great for the matches ahead ..and I m sorry for all the trouble.”

It remains to be seen how far Saina would be impacted with the incident in her forthcoming matches.