India's doping woes: WADA numbers shows high positivity rate for India

Business Standard

20-06-2025

India's doping woes came to the fore once again with the country topping the World Anti-Doping Agency's 2023 testing figures among countries which analysed 5,000 or more samples even as the sports ministry promised an "aggressive clean-up" and an amended Anti-Doping Act after addressing objections from the WADA.
India's positivity rate for banned substances stood at 3.8 per cent -- 214 Adverse Analytical Findings (AAF) from 5606 samples. The sample size was significantly higher from 2022 when 3865 tests returned an AAF rate of 3.2 per cent.
Of the 5606 tests, 2748 were conducted in-competition. India's positivity rate for banned substances was significantly higher than China (28,197 samples, 0.2 per cent AAF rate), USA (6798 samples, 1.0 per cent AAF rate), France (11,368 samples, 0.9 per cent AAF rate), Germany (15,153 samples, 0.4 per cent AAF rate) and Russia (10,395 samples, 1.0 per cent AAF rate).
As compared to India's 214, France, Russia, USA, China and Germany recorded 105, 99, 66, 60 and 57 AAFs respectively.
"Any amount of doping is unacceptable but we have to acknowledge that our testing is vigorous and with every year the sample size is increasing. With our aggressive awareness campaigns, we intend to bring the numbers down in the next two years," a sports ministry source said when approached for a comment on the latest report.
Globally, 204,809 tests were conducted in 2023, of which 1820 came positive for banned drugs with India's share of 214 accounting for over 11 per cent of the total number of offenders, the highest for any country.
In all, Delhi's National Dope testing Laboratory (NDTL) tested 6,077 samples, including those from neighbouring countries. It's Adverse Analytical Findings (AAF) rate of 3.63 per cent makes up the highest percentage of positive dope results among the 30 WADA-accredited facilities across the world.
Athletics leads the number of India's positive cases with 61 AAFs from 1223 samples -- 567 in-competition and 539 out-of-competition urine samples as well as 117 blood samples. One AAF was reported from among the blood samples.
Weightlifting accounted for 38 AAFs from 451 samples, while powerlifting and wrestling contributed 28 and 10 AAFs respectively.
The numbers have expectedly raised an alarm and an admission that the country is yet to implement its Anti-Doping Act, which was passed in 2022, due to objections from WADA on some unspecified provisions.
"The NADA bill will be brought back to the Parliament after a restructuring. We have addressed the objections raised by WADA, which required changes to certain provisions," a sports ministry source said.
The National Anti-Doping Act, 2022 empowers the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) with legal authority and investigative powers similar to law enforcement bodies.
NADA even conducted a workshop recently involving officers of CBI and INTERPOL to understand doping investigation mechanisms, including interrogation of suspected dope offenders and banned substances' suppliers.
"The ministry is going to tackle this menace aggressively. There will be compulsory monthly doping awareness programmes and nutritional supplements will be tested at specialised labs in Gandhinagar and Delhi to ensure that they do not contain prohibited substances," a ministry source said.
"Most of the time, doping by a young athlete is either unintentional due to lack of knowledge or in desperation to get that one national performance that would help in getting a government job. But we will drill it into their psyche that they have more to lose if they don't comply with anti-doping rules," he added.
A NADA source said that India has demonstratively upped its numbers as far as testing is concerned and in relative terms, there has been a marginal decline in positivity rate.
"We had nearly the same positivity rate when we tested close to 4000 samples and now that rate has more or less remained the same with 1500 more tests this year. So, in relative terms there is a decline," he said.
"But of course, even this number is unacceptable given our ambition to be a sporting powerhouse," he added.
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