Gurugram: Eight years after shooter Ankur Mittal won gold in double trap at the ISSF World Shooting Championship in Changwon, the Haryana government issued orders appointing him as a Haryana Civil Service officer.
Mittal is one of seven outstanding sportspersons inducted into the bureaucracy in Haryana. While six got postings as Haryana Civil Services (Executive Branch) officers, one was inducted in the Haryana Police Service (HPS).
The Human Resources Department issued the appointment order on 2 September, after Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini gave his approval. The order comes under the Haryana Outstanding Sportspersons (Recruitment and Conditions of Service) Rules, 2018.
Mittal, who also won bronze at the 2018 Asian Games and shot his way to the World Championship gold, gets four years of seniority under Schedule-I of the 2018 rules along with his HCS post.
Abhishek Verma, a pistol shooter, won bronze at the 2018 Asian Games and silver at the same World Championship in Changwon, South Korea. He, too, becomes an HCS officer.
Four Para Games medallists make the list. Archer Harvinder Singh Bhyan and badminton player Tarun Dhillon won gold at the 2018 Asian Para Games. So did para-athlete Ekta Bhyan. Amit Kumar, also a para-athlete, won his gold four years earlier, at the 2014 Asian Para Games. All four become HCS officers.
Athlete Manjit Singh, who won gold in the 2018 Asian Games, gets the HPS posting.
A court order eight years in the making
The appointments trace back to a 2022 order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, in two writ petitions filed by sportspersons seeking government jobs promised to medal winners. The court had asked the state to act. The state didn’t move fast enough, and the matter reached the Supreme Court.
On 29 May, the Supreme Court disposed of the sportspersons’ special leave petitions with a fresh direction to Haryana: appoint them.
The seven were appointed under rules the state no longer follows for new applicants. The Haryana Outstanding Sportspersons (Recruitment and Conditions of Service) Rules, 2018, promised medal winners direct appointment as HCS, HPS, or Group A/B officers, with seniority benefits running four to eight years depending on the tournament.
In February 2021, the Cabinet repealed the 2018 Rules with the Haryana Outstanding Sportspersons (Group A, B & C) Service Rules. The new rules created a separate cadre within the Sports Department itself, posts of deputy director, senior coach, coach, and junior coach, rather than administrative postings across government departments.
The seven sportspersons in this order had qualified under the older, 2018 regime, before it was repealed. Their claim to HCS and HPS postings survived only because the courts held the earlier rules applied to them. That is what Wednesday’s order enforces.
The Human Resources Department’s order has instructed the state’s Chief Secretary and the Additional Chief Secretary in the Home Department to issue appointment letters to all seven “at the earliest.” A copy has also gone to the Principal Secretary in the Sports Department, referencing an earlier file from June that flagged the case.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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