Bengaluru: India suffered a big jolt on Monday with Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), an independent body of World Athletics to manage integrity issues, placing the country under the highest-risk category. This could spell more trouble for Indian athletes at global events.Under World Athletics Anti-Doping Rules, AIU Board categorises member-federations as per doping risk to the sport. ‘Cat A’ means the highest risk. India has slipped from Cat ‘B’ to ‘A’. “The doping situation in India has been high risk for a long time. Unfortunately, the quality of domestic anti-doping programme is not proportionate to the risk,” AIU chair David Howman said in a press release.“While Athletics Federation of India has favoured anti-doping reforms within India, not enough has changed. AIU will now work with Athletics Federation of India (AFI) to achieve reforms (just the way) we’ve done with other ‘Category A’ member-federations,” he added. The news has shaken the AFI brass, which had discussed the issue again at its recent AGM in Kohima. “It’s a big concern. That’s the reason why we made it mandatory for top athletes to compete in more meets. This was aimed at preventing athletes from taking banned drugs during extended training periods and then producing stunning results in one meet,” an AFI official told TOI.“The high number of India doping cases is also a result of a lot of junior athletes getting caught for using banned drugs. Though they are under AFI, they are not strictly under our watch,” he said.The AIU decision relates to the “consistently extremely high” risk of doping in India which has ranked in the top two for the most Anti-Doping Rule Violations (ADRVs) in athletics between 2022 and 2025. In 2022, India recorded 48 ADRVs (ranked 2nd); in 2023, 63 (ranked 2nd); in 2024, 71 (ranked 1st); and for 2025, India has recorded 30 ADRVs so far (ranked 1st), the release said. Bahrain Athletics Association will also move up from Cat A to B.‘NADA India needs overhaul’With AIU pointing to the creation of an independent Bahrain NADO doing a fine job to curb the menace, the focus came on the work of India’s National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) India, with experts calling for a total overhaul. “There are quite a few officers who are in the same post for more than 10 years. That could bring complacency and even corruption,” sources told TOI.“NADA must ensure quality manpower on priority. There is no proper testing plan. Some testing numbers that they provide are incorrect. They need to examine the high attrition rate of contractual staff in the past few years, where NADA invested in training them, but they left in a few years.”
