Published Paper Details:

Few questions in Indian sports law are as simultaneously urgent and underexplored as the regulation of doping. India carries one of the worst global records for anti-doping rule violations, yet for decades it ran its enforcement machinery without any dedicated statute -- relying instead on a patchwork of society-registered rules that courts could, and did, question at will. This paper traces the arc of that story: from NADA's earliest years as a body with authority but no legislative teeth, through the enactment of the National Anti-Doping Act in 2022, to the sweeping reform proposals contained in the National Anti-Doping (Amendment) Bill, 2025. Along the way, it examines India's obligations under the WADA Code and the UNESCO Convention Against Doping in Sports, and asks honestly how well the domestic framework has lived up to those commitments. The paper pays particular attention to three recurring failures that have plagued enforcement -- the 2019 suspension of the National Dope Testing Laboratory, the problem of inadvertent doping among under-educated athletes, and the procedural shortcomings of NADA's disciplinary panels. It also brings the constitutional dimension into focus, looking at how anti-doping sanctions interact with athletes' fundamental rights under Articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Constitution. The paper closes with concrete reform suggestions drawn from comparative experience and the specific contours of India's sporting ecosystem.