The National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) has started a Secondary Testing Pool (STP), which was set up in the last quarter of 2025.
It is an additional pool to avoid enlarging the Registered Testing Pool (RTP) beyond a certain limit and contains athletes who are in the second tier of the sport and may not require very strict monitoring.
The STP, drawn up as per World Anti-Doping (WADA) regulations, currently has 48 athletes from five sports: athletics (6), boxing (13), judo (5), wrestling (7) and weightlifting (17).
In comparison, RTP has 348 athletes with athletics contributing 120, wrestling 31, weightlifting 23 and boxing 22.
The major difference between STP and RTP is that there is no ‘one-hour slot’ in the new category. That means athletes who are in the STP do not have to provide a one-hour window to NADA for every day of the year at a pre-designated venue where they would be available for sample collection. It could be any place, from a residence to a training ground or a competition venue.
The STP will need to be expanded in the near future since it currently contains only a limited number of athletes. Especially strange is the number of athletes in athletics being limited to just six.
Athletics is at the top of India’s doping violations and also tops World Athletics lists for having the maximum number of currently ineligible athletes.
The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) of World Athletics has recently said that NADA’s testing needs to improve, and it would work with the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) to have better control over the doping situation in the country.
India has been shifted to the top-most category of AIU in the anti-doping classification in order to have better monitoring and increased out-of-competition testing.
Many of the athletes who recently figured in the World Relays in Botswana are missing from the NADA RTP. They will either have to be included in the next quarter or taken into the STP for the time being.
Those who are not in the RTP and were part of the Indian team that participated in the World Relays included S. Tamilarasu (100m), Harsh Raut (100m), T. S. Manu (400m), Dharmveer Choudhary (400m), Theerthesh Shetty (400m), Rashdeep Kaur (400m), Kumari Saloni (400m) Sudeshna Shivankar (100m) and Tamanna (100m).
If not in the RTP, the above athletes may now need to figure in the STP. Several of them were not tested in the run-up to the World meet.
Since there is no ‘one-hour slot’ for testing prescribed in the rules, there is no necessity for an athlete to be present at a place indicated in the whereabouts form at a particular time.
Place of overnight stay, home address, usual training locations, forthcoming competition details, addresses of venues, etc., will have to be given for every quarter.
Fifteen days prior to the beginning of a quarter, an athlete will have to submit the whereabouts information through ADAMS (anti-doping administration and management system)
“If, without adequate justification, your whereabouts information is not filed on the required dates, or is not found to be accurate following an attempt to test, or information is obtained by NADA, that is contrary to the whereabouts provided, the following consequences shall apply: The athlete may be elevated to NADA India’s Registered Testing Pool”.
Thus, there is no rule regarding the accumulation of filing failures or missed tests leading up to a suspension, as in the RTP rules. Three missed tests, filing failures, or a combination of both in 12 months could lead to a suspension of two years under WADA rules.
A minimum of three tests is stipulated for the RTP athletes every year. There is no such stipulation for STP athletes. Recently, the AIU, by bringing India to the ‘A’ category, stipulated that athletes would be subjected to three tests separated by 21 days each, 10 months in the run-up to a World Championships or Olympics. Athletes not tested as per this requirement would not be eligible for the global tournaments.
The new STP list includes track and field athletes Rohit Yadav (javelin), Selva Prabhu (triple jump) and Priya Mohan (women’s 400m), according to a NADA reply in response to an RTI application.
It also contains wrestlers Anshu Malik and Sonam Malik, both international medal winners, as well as weightlifter Sairaj Rajesh Pardeshi, whose recent provisional suspension for doping had led to a lot of debate after he alleged that he was framed.
NADA will need to step up its testing among elite athletes getting ready for the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games. Then only it would be able to meet the requirements of WADA and AIU and arrest the plunging reputation of India in the anti-doping sphere.
Published on May 07, 2026