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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, February 15: A commission appointed by the Delhi High Court today gave a clean chit to the organisers of the Channel V music awards night held at Nehru Stadium here on November 21 last year.
Kaul was appointed by the court to assess the damage, if any, done to the stadium after the court refused to stay the holding of the show as sought by athlete Yashpal Chhabra. The latter had filed a petition in which he alleged that the Channel V awards’ presentation function would cause extensive damage to the Nehru Stadium’s costly synthetic track.
Kaul in his report, however, said: “The non-running track area in the grass had been slightly damaged. The area had holes some of them filled with sand, while some other holes had been properly filled up”.
The report also stated: “The running track has an aluminium border and one section had been damaged during the organisation of the show, but SAI stated that the damaged piece could be replaced.” According to the report, there was also some water-logging in the warm-up area, but it was pointed out that the show organisers had never used this area. Kaul said the water-logging should be attended to immediately as mosquitoes had started breeding there. And some parts of the warm-up area was found to be uneven. Kaul said it was not clear when exactly this had happened.
The practice area, again not used by the organisers, was also found to be damaged. SAI officials said the life of the practice track laid in 1982 had expired. “It appears from the statements of various parties that the position of the track before the show was the same,” Kaul noted.
