Equipment for inter-varsity rowing tournament withheld

Mohit Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 8

The fate of the All-India Inter-University Rowing Championship hangs in the balance as the Railways Department here has refused to clear the consignment of laning balls, used to demarcate a track on water, for the March 12 tournament, citing unavailability of original bill.     

The batch received from Odisha is lying at the parcel depot of the Chandigarh railway station.

A perplexed Deepak Kumar Singh who was at the station to get the consignment released claimed that someone had stolen the bill lying in one of the consignments.

However, the authorities concerned maintained that sending of bills in the consignment was strictly prohibited and they could not deliver the batch without a duplicate copy of the bill.

“We have to abide by the rules and the consignment will be released only after the duplicate copy of the bill will be shown to us,” said a railways official.

Deepak Kumar, who works with Punjab University as water sports coach, though, pointed that it would take a couple days to fetch the duplicate bill and they were already running late for the tournament. “The official is demanding a duplicate bill and an affidavit with signatures of three witnesses. I can submit the affidavit but the duplicate bill will take at least a couple of days to reach Chandigarh. We are already running short of time.” 

An employee working at the parcel depot, meanwhile, said the stealing of the bill could be a handiwork of some mischievous elements operating at the store house.

“It is not for the first time that a bill has been stolen from the consignment. Similar incidents have been reported in the past as well,” said the employee.