Sushmita Singha Roy

New Delhi: Bengal heptathlete Sushmita Singha Roy, who recently won a bronze medal in the Asian championships, has surprisingly been dropped from the Indian squad for the World Championship.

The World Championship is schedule in Osaka, Japan from August 25 to September 2.

According to sources in the Indian Athletics Federation (IAF), which is yet to announce the team officially, all those athletes, who obtained the qualifying standard for the championship, have been selected except for Sushmita.

Sources said that the selection committee, which met here on Monday, decided against taking any heptathlete, leaving out both Sushmita and Soma Biswas. Going strictly by the norms, the two Bengal girls could have found berths in the team since both has B standard qualification points (5800).

The selection committee, it is believed, has pointed out that Sushmita’s current form is below par. She could score only 5154 points in the Asian meet at Amman. Soma, however, has not competed throughout the season.

While the Bengal girls have been dropped, the IAF, surprisingly, has picked up discus thrower Seema Antil, who was excluded from the Asian championship squad because of her poor form and fitness.

Seema does have a B standard qualification mark (60.56), but it came only in the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne last year. She could not participate in the Asian Games after being hit by a doping controversy.

The squad

Men: Joseph Abraham (400m hurdles), Renjith Maheswary (triple jump), Navpreet Singh (shot put) and Vikas Gowda (discus).
Women: Anju George (long jump); Krishna Poonia and Seema Antil (discus); Manjeet Kaur, Mandeep Kaur, Chitra K. Soman, Anu Mariam Jose, Sini Jose and Iylene Samantha (4x400m relay).