Para Sports Roadmap: India's Paralympic Pathway, in One Place

India left Paris 2024 with 29 Paralympic medals, seven gold, nine silver and thirteen bronze, its best Games ever by a wide margin, ahead of Tokyo 2020’s 19. Avani Lekhara became the first Indian woman to win two individual Paralympic gold medals. Sumit Antil became the first Indian man to successfully defend a Paralympic title. These are not obscure results; they are covered on national television and known well beyond the para-sport community. This platform has covered India’s Olympic-sport pathways in depth. This is the first article to do the same for the Paralympic one. It is a structured, funded system with its own federations, its own competition calendar and its own eligibility rules, distinct enough from the Olympic-sport pathway that it deserves its own roadmap.

Who Runs Para Sport in India

The Paralympic Committee of India (PCI), formed in 1994, is the National Paralympic Committee recognised by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), and functions as the apex body for Paralympic sport in the country. Individual sports still have their own structures underneath PCI. They are run in three ways:

• Some are run by dedicated para federations (the Para Athletics Federation of India).
• Some are run by the same body that runs the able-bodied sport, with a para wing attached:
  • the National Rifle Association of India for para shooting
  • the Table Tennis Federation of India for para table tennis
  • the Archery Association of India for para archery
• Some, like para powerlifting, run more directly under PCI itself.

A family entering this system should expect to deal with PCI for classification and national team matters, and with the sport-specific body for domestic competition and training.

Roadmaps

Who Runs Each of the Six Para Sports

	Run by	How it is set up
Para athletics	Para Athletics Federation of India (PAFI)	A dedicated para federation
Para archery	Archery Association of India (AAI)	The body that runs the able-bodied sport, with a para wing attached
Para badminton	Badminton Association of India	The body that runs the able-bodied sport, with a para wing attached
Para table tennis	Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI)	The body that runs the able-bodied sport, with a para wing attached
Para shooting	National Rifle Association of India (NRAI)	The body that runs the able-bodied sport, with a para wing attached
Para powerlifting	Paralympic Committee of India (PCI), directly	No separate federation

Expect to deal with PCI for classification and national team matters, and with the sport's own body for domestic competition and training. SAI's Gandhinagar Nodal Centre for Para Sports covers para athletics, para swimming, para powerlifting and para table tennis.

Classification: The Step This Pathway Has That Others Don’t

Every Paralympic sport requires classification, a formal process that determines whether an athlete’s impairment meets a sport’s minimum eligibility criteria and, if so, which competition category they belong in. The IPC recognises ten eligible impairment types (including limb deficiency, impaired muscle power, impaired passive range of movement and vision impairment, among others). Classification is sport-specific, not universal. An athlete is classified separately for each sport they compete in, by accredited classifiers, against that sport’s own rulebook. This is not a one-time medical certificate; it is closer to a competitive category assignment, and it is the first concrete step in this pathway, before training plans, before competition entry, before anything else. Families should expect to encounter classification at the state or national championship level well before international competition becomes relevant, and should ask their sport’s federation directly which classifiers are accredited to assess their child’s category.

The Khelo India Para Games

The Khelo India Para Games is this pathway’s equivalent of the mainstream Khelo India Games, a national multi-discipline championship specifically for para athletes. Its second edition ran 20-27 March 2025 across three Delhi venues:

• Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium for athletics and archery
• the IG Stadium complex for badminton and table tennis
• the Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range for shooting

It drew roughly 1,200 athletes from 36 states and union territories and covered six disciplines: Para Archery, Para Athletics, Para Badminton, Para Table Tennis, Para Powerlifting and Para Shooting. Eighteen national records were broken. This is the single most useful entry point for a family trying to gauge where their child stands nationally in one of these six sports, and this series covers each of them individually.

SAI’s Dedicated Para Infrastructure

The Sports Authority of India has designated its Regional Centre at Gandhinagar as the country’s Nodal Centre for Para Sports. It operates under SAI’s National Centre of Excellence scheme specifically for para athletes across Para Athletics, Para Swimming, Para Powerlifting and Para Table Tennis. Recent infrastructure additions were inaugurated to support it:

• a dedicated para-athlete hostel
• a centralised dining hall
• a strength and conditioning hall

This is a physical, government-run training base distinct from the general SAI network this platform has described for Olympic sports, worth researching directly for any family whose sport is covered there.

Para-TOPS: The Same Support Structure, Extended

The Target Olympic Podium Scheme extends to Paralympic-track athletes on the same terms this platform has described for Olympic-track TOPS Core Group athletes. The support is:

• a disclosed ₹50,000-a-month Out-of-Pocket Allowance
• foreign training
• international competition exposure
• equipment and coaching support

It is administered through the Mission Olympic Cell under the Director General of SAI (verify current figures at yas.gov.in). Para athletes across archery, athletics, badminton, powerlifting, shooting, table tennis and several other disciplines are eligible once they reach the identified probable-athlete tier. TOPS occupies the same structural position here as for Olympic sport: a support layer that supplements state and federation-level training, not a starting point for a young athlete still building a competitive record.

Academic Management

The core advice this platform gives across every sport, that NIOS’s On-Demand exam system becomes the practical solution once serious competition travel starts conflicting with a fixed school exam calendar, applies here without change. Two additional realities are specific to this pathway and worth planning for directly:

• Classification travel. State and national classification panels are not always local, and a family may need to travel for an assessment separate from a competition itself.
• Equipment or mobility logistics around competition travel.

Both are worth building into a training and exam calendar earlier than families in able-bodied sport typically need to.

Risk Ladder for Para Sport (General Structure)

Level 1: Paralympic, World Championship and Asian Para Games selection, the level India’s Paris 2024 team occupies. Para-TOPS Core Group support applies at this tier.

Level 2: National team and national camp selection without individual global-podium results yet, the tier most Khelo India Para Games medallists are aiming toward next.

Level 3: Coaching and classification-adjacent roles, alongside Railway and other government sports-quota routes. Accredited classifiers are themselves a needed professional category in this system. The sports-quota routes apply to para athletes at state and national level the same way they do in Olympic sport.

Level 4: Government exams. An athlete who kept academic pace through school and NIOS holds the same foundation this series describes for SSC CGL, banking and state PSC exams. Reservation provisions for persons with disabilities in central and state government recruitment are worth researching directly. They sit alongside, not instead of, the sports-quota routes this platform has covered elsewhere.

Level 5: Sports administration, coaching certification and the general professional track this series describes for athletes who move fully outside competitive sport.

The Six Sports in This Series

This platform covers the six para disciplines individually, matching the Khelo India Para Games’ own six-discipline structure:

• Para Archery
• Para Athletics
• Para Badminton
• Para Table Tennis
• Para Powerlifting
• Para Shooting

Each has its own domestic federation, classification categories, centerpiece example and treatment of where India’s pathway is strong and where it is still developing.