new delhi the national antidoping agencys director general navin agarwal on wednesday said the body will conduct its disciplinary hearings online from friday despite the many logistical challenges to ensure cases dont pile up due to the national lockdownnada hearings have not been taking place due to the lockdown to contain the covid19 pandemicthats right we will be starting with our online hearings from may 8 both antidoping disciplinary panel addp and antidoping appeals panel adap hearings will be conducted for the cases which are pending agarwal told pti in an interviewlast year they addp and adap did a remarkable job and disposed off so many cases which hasnt happened earlier in the history of nada our panels disposed off 180 cases which is a record for the agency he assertedagarwal acknowledged that the unprecedented step would have its share of operational hassleslisting inconsistent or unavailable internet as one of them agarwal said athletes will be allowed to participate via audio calls to ensure that things can be managed smoothlywe understand that the athlete needs to have the internet facility at his home for the hearings i know there are limitations we are working on that and made arrangements at our levelit will only be done on the availability of an athlete through either audio or video i know in rural areas internet bandwidth can be an issue or network we are game with even an audio recording or a conference call he explainednada had earlier conceded that testing has become difficult because of the lockdown agarwal said efforts are on streamline the processwe are requesting the ministry as the campuses in nis patiala and spots authority of india sai bengaluru are closed and have barred entry or exit of any outsiders as per government guidelinesso we are taking this up with ministry and would like to know whether our dope control officers dcos will be allowed inside the campuses for testing subject to all clearances he saidagarwal said another aspect of the task is the health of dcoswe have to ensure that dcos should not have any covid19 symptoms and they must not have come in contact with patients in the last 14 days he saidthat is something that the management of the concerned training centres will be doing temperature checks of anyone who is entering from outside the campuses should not be a problemour dcos have already been advised to follow social distancing norms maintain a distance of 2 metres from the athlete and use masks and gloves and sanitisers he addedagarwal said the testing can resume once the national camps begin again sports minister kiren rijiju has said that efforts are on to get them restarted by the end of this monthand what happens to the collected samples in the absence of a wadaaccredited laboratory in the country and the many restrictions on flights abroad which might come in the way of sending them to labs outsidethe cargo flights are still very much on so sending the