Athletes protest in J&K over ‘unfair’ sports quota job list
A decade-long freeze on the sports quota recruitment in Jammu and Kashmir had left hundreds of athletes in limbo since 2014 before a vacancy notification by the Sports Council, to fill the backlog vacancies from 2014 till 2021, ignited hope. However, the final list of athletes selected under the sports quota policy vide notification No. 02-JK (YSS) of 2026 released on June 10 earlier this month has now triggered a protest. Several athletes alleged that lower-category non-Olympic sports benefited the most from the recruitment process. Of the five gazetted posts, four were allotted to athletes from Pencak Silat, while the remaining post went to Olympian shooter Chain Singh. “We had five gazetted posts, of which four were given to a non-Olympic B category sport called Pencak Silat. How is this fair?” Afreen Hyder, an international taekwondo player from the union territory, questioned. Categorisation of sports The hierarchy laid down in the government’s own sports policy divides the disciplines into Olympic and non-Olympic categories with three subcategories A, B, C. According to the J&K Sports Council, …




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