These days Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports Vijay Goel cannot seem to get anything right. Earlier this month, the Rio Olympics committee had threatened to cancel the BJP MP's accreditation for "rude and aggressive" behaviour. Then he received criticism for forcefully clicking selfies with tired athletes right after a performance.
His twitter account was also not free from mistakes. Not only did he get Dipa Karmakar's name wrong, he also got confused between athletes Dutee Chand and Srabani Nanda.
In an attempt to clean up his act, Goel met actor Suniel Shetty to discuss how sports in India could be developed. Obviously the right choice.
But that doesn't seem to have helped the sports minister. At a press conference, where his tone seems heavily rehearsed, as though he is trying not to get things wrong, he said, "Today the Khel Ratna awardee, Dhyan Chand awardees, Dronacharya awardees, Tenzing Norgay National Adventure awardees met the Prime Minister. In that, we also had two Rio gold medallists – PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik." Hugely impressive as their achievements might be, neither of the two Olympians won a gold in Rio.
Goel, as usual, was taken to task by the folks on Twitter.
After all that has been made about India's failure to win more medals, especially golds, the sports minister might be expected to know a thing or two about the situation off the top of his head. But not according to Goel himself.
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