Now, Milkha hits back at Bharti

'Flying Sikh' Milkha Singh hit back at Sports Minister Uma Bharti when she phoned him on Friday morning to pacify him after having slammed him on Thursday for harping on the fact that the Arjuna award had come too late for him.

Milkha Singh said, during his 15-minute conversation, he told Bharti about his achievements and how then prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and President Dr Rajendra Prasad congratulated him while presenting him the Padma Shri in 1959.

"I told her that I had broken the world record [clocking 45.8 seconds at the Rome Olympics in 1960] running bare feet. I also told her that I was given the Helms Trophy for being the best athlete in 1959. She told me that she was not even born then. I told her that she should have the right kind of advisors, who would tell her the truth about my achievements," Milkha told rediff.com over phone from his residence in Chandigarh.

Slamming the minister for her ignorance about the achievements of sportsmen of his calibre, Milkha said: "I told her that when you could give Bharat Ratna awards to Lata Mangeshkar and Pandit Ravi Shankar the least you could have done was to give Milkha Singh a Padma Vibhushan, if not a Bharat Ratna."

He also came down heavily on sportsmen who use performance enhancing drugs to enhance their timings in India but fail to repeat the same at the international level.

"Look at Paramjit Singh. The media went to town saying that here was an athlete who has broken the records of Milkha Singh in India. But what happened to this boy at the international level. In the Olympics he was out in the first round itself. Besides, the government gave him the Arjuna award," he said.

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