At the 50th meeting of the Mission Olympic Cell that was held on November 26, the decision to include 8 Para Athletes in four different sports Para Athletics, Para Shooting, Para Badminton and Para Table Tennis into the Target Olympic Podium Scheme was taken.

Para Athletics: Men’s Discus Thrower in F52 event Vinod Kumar who has qualified for the Tokyo Paralympics at the World Championships was included in the TOPS scheme. Praveen Kumar who has qualified for the Tokyo Paralympics in Men’s High Jump T64 was also included in the scheme as is Ajit Kumar Panchal who competes in the Men’s F52 Discus Throw event.

Virender Dhankar who competes in the Men’s Shot Put F57 event and Jayanti Behera who competes in theWomen’s 400m F47 event were excluded from the scheme.

Para Badminton: The Women’s Doubles Pair of Parul Parmar and Palak Kohli (SL3-SU5) who are currently ranked world number 5 in the Race to qualification for the Tokyo Paralympics have been inducted into the TOPS scheme.

Para Shooting: Rubina Francis who competes in the Women’s 10m Air Pistol SH1 event has been included in the TOPS scheme as has Siddharth Babu who competes in the Men’s 50m Rifle Prone event, Siddharth Babu has already attained a quota for the Tokyo Paralympics. Deepender who competes in the Men’s 10m Air Pistol SH1 event has been excluded from the scheme.

Para Table Tennis: Bhavina Patel who is ranked 8th in the world in the W-Class 4 event has been included in the TOPS scheme. She has earned a quota for the Tokyo Paralympics and will be the first Indian to represent the country in Para Table Tennis at the Paralympics.

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NB/OA