Hooda wants Haryana’s BJP govt to take a leaf out of his book—appoint CWG gold winners as DSPs

Gurugram: Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has demanded that the state’s Commonwealth Games gold medallists be appointed Deputy Superintendents (DSP) in the Haryana Police. Reviving a decade-old political argument over how the state should reward its athletes, Hooda used social media platform X to invoke the ‘Padak Lao, Pad Pao (get a medal, get a post)’ scheme that his Congress government ran between 2005 and 2014.

Accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of tampering with the system to deny athletes their due once it came to power, Hooda said the policy had built Haryana into a sporting powerhouse, and credited it with laurels the state’s players continue to bring home.

He further said: “We built the sports infrastructure, set up academies, turned Haryana into a sports hub, and gave the youth the right direction; the results are visible even today. The boxing academy in Bhiwani was opened during our tenure, and today our daughters from there are lighting up the world stage.”

He added that the BJP government had undone what Congress built. “They have tampered with the policy we made and denied players their rewards, their honours, their positions. Even the players we appointed as DSPs haven’t been promoted under this government,” he said.

The demand lands on the back of a rich Glasgow haul. Six of Haryana’s boxers won gold at the Commonwealth Games — Preeti Pawar, Jaismine Lamboria and Sakshi Chaudhary, all from Bhiwani, in the women’s draw, and Priya Ghanghas, also of Bhiwani, alongside Sachin Siwach and Ankush Panghal among the men. Hisar’s Narender Berwal took silver in the +90kg category. Panipat’s Neeraj Chopra added a javelin silver, his second Commonwealth Games medal after the 2018 gold at Gold Coast.

Haryana Police records back up the part of Hooda’s claim about his government’s track record. Between 2005 and 2014, some 13 sportspersons were recruited as DSPs on the state Cabinet’s recommendation, using powers under Rule 14 of the Punjab Police Service Rules, 1959, to grant relaxations for exceptional appointments. The list includes hockey players Mamta Kharab, Sardar Singh and Surinder Kaur; wrestlers Geetika Jakhar, Ramesh Kumar, Ravinder Singh Sangwan and Yogeshwar Dutt; boxers Jitender Kumar, Akhil Kumar, Vijender Singh, Vikas Krishan and Paramjeet Samota; kabaddi player Mamta Sodha; and cricketer Joginder Sharma.

Sandeep Singh left the force to contest the 2019 Assembly election from Pehowa, won, and was made sports minister — before being booked on a molestation complaint by a woman athlete and dropped from the Cabinet when Nayab Singh Saini took over as chief minister.

Yogeshwar Dutt tried the same route from Baroda in 2019 and lost to Sri Kishan Hooda. In 2020, Dutt was fielded yet again by the BJP in a byelection to Baroda Assembly seat necessitated by Sri Kishan Hooda’s death, but he lost to Congress candidate Induraj Narwal. The BJP didn’t field Dutt in in the 2024 Assembly elections, but he continues to be a BJP leader.

Boxer Vijender Singh quit his DSP’s job when he turned professional in 2015. He joined the Congress ahead of 2019 election. However, he quit Congress and turned up unannounced at the BJP office to join the party ahead of the 2024 Assembly elections.

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Post-Hooda era

Since 2014, the Khattar as well as the Saini governments have moved away from discretionary appointments toward a rules-based framework, the Haryana Outstanding Sportspersons Service Rules, alongside cash award slabs for medal winners that have themselves been revised more than once.

Under the revised norms, sportspersons can compete for jobs in Group A, B and C under the Outstanding Sportsperson (OSP) cadre based on their achievements in the sports.

A retired India Police Service officer, explaining the legal architecture behind the old appointments to ThePrint, said the underlying law leaves little room for a standing scheme of the kind Congress ran. Regular DSP appointments go through the Haryana Public Service Commission or fixed promotion quotas, 80 per cent by promotion, and 20 per cent direct recruitment, under rules framed under Article 309 of the Constitution. The Cabinet’s Rule 14 power, he said, was meant for genuinely exceptional cases, such as the appointment of K.K. Rao on compassionate grounds after his father, DSP Ranbir Singh, was killed by terrorists in March 1989.

That power, he said, was used more loosely after 2005. He cited Mamta Sodha, an Everester appointed DSP though mountaineering has no recognised competitive sporting body, and Joginder Sharma, a Rohtak cricketer given the post despite never having played an Olympic sport.

The officer added that the record of sports-quota DSPs inside the force has been mixed, with most of those appointed showing weak outcomes on professionalism, integrity and contribution to developing sport within the department itself.

He said that the sportspersons are normally busy in their sporting career and are hardly able to complete their training after induction into the police force. Also, the kind of expenditure a sportsperson has to incur on oneself for training and diet, cannot be logically met from the salary of a government officer even if one is a DSP. “Looking at their expertise, the government should make use of their talent at jobs where they can train the future generation of sportspersons,” he added.

(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)

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