Hyderabad: Hyderabad District Badminton Association President Chamundeswarnath on Wednesday said he will have a word with the gymnast on the difficulties she is facing in handling the vehicle.
Earlier, the celebrated gymnast had expressed her inability to maintain a luxury car in Agartala. “We will discuss with her. Whatever Dipa is comfortable with, we will look into it,” Chamundeswarnath said.
“The idea of gifting cars to the sportspersons was to encourage them to do better,” he said.
Sachin Tendulkar, who was the Goodwill Ambassador of the Indian team at Rio Olympics, handed over the keys of the vehicles to them at a function held at the Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy here on August 28.
The 23-year-old Tripura girl scored 15.066 points, a mere 0.150 less than eventual bronze medallist Giulia Steingruber (15.216) of Switzerland, to miss out on a podium finish.
Dipa’s father Dulal Karmakar said that he, Dipa and her coach B.S. Nandi collectively expressed the desire to return the car as there was no servicing centre in Agartala. “We want to return the BMW car. There is no servicing centre for BMW car at Agartala. In case of any mechanical dificulty a technician would have to fly from Kolkata and we have to bear the entire cost,” Dulal said in Agartala.
However, Karmakar denied that they wanted to return the car because roads were in bad shape in Tripura. “Roads here are good. May not be as wide as that of Delhi and Kolkata, but BMW car can move here,” he pointed out.
Karmakar said they had requested the badminton body to pay money so that with it they could buy a Maruti Suzuki or a Hyundai car which have servicing centres as well as showroom here.
