More than 600 athletes are competing in the five-day National Inter-State Championships. | Photo Credit: BISWARANJAN ROUT

Athletics Federation of India (AFI) officials conducted surprise checks of the bags of all participants at the ongoing National Inter-State Senior Championships here to look for syringes and banned substances, but did not find any prohibited items, federation spokesperson Adille Sumariwalla said on Saturday.

More than 600 athletes are competing in the five-day championships which began on Wednesday.

The championships also serves as a selection trial for the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya in Japan from September 19 to October 4.

“We have zero tolerance to any of this (prohibited drugs related matter), we have no-needle policy. Actually on Thursday itself, we raided all the athletes’ bags to see if anybody had any needles or forbidden substances and we didn’t find anything. So, we already searched them,” Sumariwalla told PTI.

“AFI is the one that pushed for criminalisation of doping, that pushed the original doping Act. We will work together with every institute whether it’s AIU (Athletics Integrity Unit), NADA or WADA to try and fight this menace in this country,” said Sumariwalla, a former AFI president and currently a vice-president of the World Athletics.

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Recently, India was designated as a country with an “extremely high” risk of doping by World Athletics after topping the list of doping offenders for the past two years, a development which will put the athletes under more stringent anti-doping stipulations.

In a decision taken recently by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) Board, Athletics Federation of India (AFI) has been re-categorised from Category B to Category A under Rule 15 of the World Athletics’ Anti-Doping Rules.

According the AIU, India recorded 48 ADRVs (ranked 2nd) in 2022, 63 (ranked 2nd) in 2023, 71 (ranked 1st) in 2024 and 30 ADRVs (ranked 1st) in 2025 (data received so far).

The AFI, however, does not currently run national camps except for the relay races, and all other athletes are training either on their own or under private entities or government institutions.

Recently, the Reliance Foundation Odisha Athletics High Performance Centre in Bhubaneswar took disciplinary action against three athletes, including terminating a prominent javelin thrower, following a “Performance-Enhancing Drug incident”.

Asked about the incident, Sumariwalla said, “Nothing has been reported to the AFI regarding this. If there is anything, they (the concerned organisation) will take care of it. They have a very strict code and NADA will take care of it if there is any issue.”

Published on Jun 27, 2026