Out of stock?

New Delhi, Feb. 8: A blend of red tape and bird flu has spawned a shuttlecock shortage that has forced the Badminton Association of India to cancel all training sessions ahead of the Olympic selection process, BAI officials said.

Despite several reminders, the Sports Authority of India (SAI) has not completed the process of approving the import of shuttlecocks yet, said Vishwas Kumar Verma, the BAI president and secretary general of the Asian Badminton Federation.

“We’ve run out of shuttlecocks for any more coaching sessions,” Verma said. “Our players are now going into the All England championship, the Swiss Open and the Indian Open with little preparation,” he said.

“This is going to jeopardise our chances of qualifying for the Olympics,” he said.

Selection for the Olympics depends on the performance of players in a series of preceding matches between February and till the end of April.

BAI officials said India needs about 13,000 dozen shuttlecocks each year and these are typically ordered in three batches. But, Verma said, the SAI has neither completed the process of procuring shuttlecocks nor approved a proposal from the BAI that it would itself import them as allowed under government rules.

A senior SAI official declined to return calls. But sources told The Telegraph that the procurement approval process was yet to be completed.

The bird flu has further complicated matters. A senior Indian trade officer said restrictions on imports recommended by the animal husbandry department also apply to shuttlecocks, which are made with feathers of geese found in China. Some species of geese are known to be carriers of the avian influenza virus.

A joint director of foreign trade said an import ban notification had been issued following the animal husbandry department’s recommendation “a few months ago”.

But BAI officials said other countries continued to import the same shuttlecocks that India had been importing for its players.

“England, Germany, France, Denmark and Switzerland and other countries continue with these shuttlecocks,” Verma said.

The feathers that go into making these shuttlecocks are chemically processed and the virus cannot survive in them, another BAI official said. The bird flu virus, H5N1, is destroyed by disinfectants and studies suggest that it cannot survive in the environment —even at low temperatures — beyond 35 days.