Neeraj ends disappointing 8th, Sachin Yadav takes 4th spot at World Championships
Tokyo (PTI): Defending champion Neeraj Chopra endured a nightmarish outing at the World Championships' men's javelin throw finals to end a disappointing eighth, outperformed by debutant compatriot Sachin Yadav who logged a personal best performance to finish a creditable fourth here on Thursday.
On a day when no thrower managed to cross 90m, Chopra was ousted after the fifth and penultimate round with a best effort of 84.03m that left him eighth overall.
The shock result was unexpected as the Indian fans have been used to Chopra either winning a gold medal or finishing on podium for the last four years since scripting history by winning the Tokyo Olympics gold in 2021.
Chopra, who had also won a silver in the 2022 edition besides the gold in 2023, has not finished outside the top-2 since winning gold in Tokyo in 2021. After Tokyo Olympics, he has either won or finished second in 24 international events.
Known for his consistency, it was inexplicable for Chopra not to even cross the 85m mark in five attempts. His worst performance before Thursday was 82.27m while winning gold at the Federation Cup in May 2024. Thursday's result would be ranked as one of the worst in Chopra's illustrious career.
Ironically, all of Sachin's five legal throws were better than Chopra's day's best of 84.03m.
The gold went to Keshorn Walcott (88.16m) of Trinidad and Tobago, followed by Grenada's Anderson Peters (87.38m) and Curtis Thompson (86.67m). Sachin was fourth with his first round effort of 86.27m.
Olympic champion Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan, a silver-medallist in the previous edition of World Championships, was among the first set of throwers to exit in the fourth round with a best of 82.75m.
The much-anticipated Chopra-Nadeem clash for the first time in more than a year never happened as the Thursday's final overturned the form book upside down.
Chopra and German Diamond League trophy winner Julian Weber were expected to be on the podium but it was not to be. Weber finished fifth with 86.11m.
Unlike the rules applied in the 2023 edition in Budapest, 10 competitors remained after the third round and two were eliminated after the fourth in the finals here. Another two were eliminated in the fifth round so that only six athletes compete in the sixth and final round.
In 2023, top eight remained after the third round and all of them continued till the sixth and final round.
Disaster for Chopra
Disaster struck the Indian superstar as nothing was going right for him though he needed just one throw of 84.85m on Wednesday to make it to finals. For the last four years, performances below 85m have been rare for Chopra.
The 27-year-old fouled the fifth attempt to exit the competition at the same venue where he won a history-making Olympic gold back in 2021.
Yadav ended up being India's only contender in the final.
His best throw of 86.27m, which came in the very first attempt, was a personal best performance and he bested not just Chopra but also Weber and Nadeem among others.
Chopra, a two-time Olympic medallist, began with 83.65m which put him at fifth place and improved upon it with 84.03m before fouling his third throw.
He dropped to eighth after the second round and remained there at the halfway stage.
His fourth throw measured 82.86m, which meant that he had to better 85.54m and Kenya's Julius Yego in his fifth throw to remain in competition.
But Chopra fouled his fifth attempt to end the day in disappointment.
After releasing his spear, he fell down sideways, grimaced and crossed the curved line to see the red flag from the official. In disappointment, he ripped off his waist belt, screamed and buried his face in it for a while before regaining composure.
He had breached the 90m mark with a 90.23m throw in the Doha Diamond League in May under the tutelage of the legendary Jan Zelezny but since then his graph has seen a dip, logging some mediocre distances.
He had failed to breach 85m in two competitions, went past a little over 85m on two occasions, and had a 86m-plus effort in another event. His second best throw this year was a 88.16m.
Yadav's rise continue
Hailing from a farmer’s family at Khekra village near Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh, Yadav bettered his earlier personal best of 85.16m which he had produced while winning a silver at the Asian Championships in Korea in May.
The 25-year-old tried to improved upon his first round throw of 86.27m but failed to do so. His second throw was a foul, followed by 85.71m, 84.90m, 85.96m and 80.95m.
The six-foot four-inch athlete is considered the next big thing in Indian javelin with his row power and big built. He first crossed the 80m mark in May 2023 and further honed and improved his performance under coach Naval Singh in the national capital.
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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