New Delhi :The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Paralympics Committee of India (PCI) to recommend the name of award-winning paralympic shooter Naresh Kumar Sharma for the Tokyo Paralympics as the deadline for sending names to the International Paralympic Committee ended today.A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court passed the order realising the urgency of the situation and said, “For the time being, we direct PCI (respondent 1) to immediately recommend the name of petitioner (Sharma) as an additional participant/additional entry for the 50 metres (SH-1)R-7 event without any exception and report compliance by tomorrow.”

Later in the day, PCI issued a statement saying, “The selection criteria and process is totally at the discretion of International Paralympic Committee and PCI has no active role to play in it apart from conducting selection as per the guidelines….But PCI still bows down to the order of the Supreme Court and will further recommend Naresh Kumar’s name once again for the selection in the desired event to the International Paralympic Committee.”

The PCI statement further said that Sharma had failed the selection criteria. Those selected qualified with much better scores than Sharma who failed to win any quota for the country in the last four years, the statement said. At Sharma’s request, the PCI claimed that his name was recommended for selection but the same was turned down by the International Paralympic Committee.

Sharma, an Arjuna awardee, was not included for the Tokyo Paralympics that is to begin on August 24. As the last date for sending the names was August 2, he approached the Supreme Court for an urgent intervention. According to him, the PCI had recommended the name of just one shooter, Deepak, under the R-7 event when there is provision for sending three names for each event.