Boccia, a Paralympic sport of strategy and skill, slowly gains popularity in India
The Hindu
Ahead of the boccia championship in Dubai, athlete Sachin Chamaria throws light on this lesser-known paralympic sport
The court is silent as Sachin Chamaria eyes a singular white ball — the jack — resting in front of him. The 30-year-old wheelchair-bound paraplegic athlete studies the distance from the ball and the angle it is at, before sliding his red ball on a ramp. It rolls over and stops right next to the jack.
This is the game of boccia (pronounced baw-cha), a paralympic sport slowly gaining popularity in India since 2017. Played specifically by wheelchair-bound athletes, the target of the sport is to get your balls as close as possible to the jack. Along with goalball, boccia is one of the only two sports to not have an equivalent in the Olympics.
None of this Sachin knew until March 2021, when his physical therapist introduced him to Jaspreet Singh Dhaliwal, founder of Para Boccia Sports Welfare Society, India’s governing body for boccia.
The election authorities are gearing up for the counting of votes cast in the simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and Assembly seats in Andhra Pradesh, scheduled to be held on June 4. The Collectors and Election Officers of Visakhapatnam, Anakapalli and Alluri Sitharama Raju (ASR) districts said on May 23 (Thursday) that their teams were ready for the counting of votes.
Responding to the prolonged water scarcity, the residents of the area took to the streets in protest on Wednesday. The protest, which drew attention to their plight, stopped only after the intervention of the police. It was not until 1.30 p.m. that a 4000-litre tanker was finally delivered by BWSSB, providing relief to the water-starved residents.