"Whereabouts Failure On Account Of Glitch In Application": Suspended Race Walker Bhawna

Indian race walker Bhawna Jat on Thursday blamed her failure to fulfil NADA's whereabouts conditions to glitches in the mobile application, through which she had to fill up the form, and subsequently losing her phone. The National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) has provisionally suspended Bhawna for failing to furnish the required whereabout details, forcing the national federation AFI to withdraw her from the World Championships in Budapest.

Bhawna had competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and is in the list of athletes for the Asian Games next month.

The 27-year-old gold medallist in the 20km race-walk event at the National Inter-State Championships in June, has been asked to return home from Budapest after Athletics Federation of India (AFI) received a notification from NADA regarding the athlete's "whereabouts failure".

The World Championships will commence on Saturday.

Bhawna told PTI on Thursday the whereabouts failure was not intentional. The athlete alleged that the application on which the OTP is sent to fill up the form malfunctioned.

"I don't know how this happened. I had gone somewhere. I was not able to receive the OTP on the (mobile) application and later I lost my phone as well. This is the reason I wasn't able to update my whereabouts." Bhawna had also missed two dope tests in May and June and was warned for a filing failure in late 2022.

Recently, Tokyo Olympian and 2021 Asian Championships bronze medallist wrestler Seema Bisla has been handed one-year ban by the Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel (ADDP) of the NADA for "whereabouts failure".

There are two types of whereabouts failures -- filing failures and missed tests.

Under the World Athletics Anti-Doping (WADA) rules, any combination of three whereabouts