new delhi indian olympic association ioa president narinder dhruv batra assured on friday that the current flight ban imposed by the japanese government on people travelling from india will not affect tokyobound indian athletes and officials all the protocols as defined by the games organising committee oc will strictly be met by the ioa he saidjapan on thursday banned entry of foreign residents from 153 countries including india in the wake of the spread of covid19 after several variants of the virus emerged the ban raised questions on whether the countrys athletes and officials could face issues entering tokyo for the olympicsa travel ban is a separate thing and going to the olympics is different the ban is not for tokyobound accredited athletes and officials accompanying them there are enough guarantees and counterguarantees between the hosts read oc and the international olympic committee ioc batra told toiyou cant stop accredited athletes of any participating nation from competing in olympics we the ioa are meeting all the protocols like vaccinating our athletes and coaches sending the contingent after obtaining rtpcr negative report 24 hours prior to their departure for the games and keeping our contingent members covidfree as far as i am concerned i have no intimation as such from either the ioc or the oc that any accredited athlete will face restrictions because of the travel ban the ioa prepares a long list of athletes and officials this long list is prepared taking in account those who have qualified and rest who have the potential to qualify so by end of june we will have the final list with us till today around 203 athletes have been vaccinated these include around 4550 paraathletes now 17 of them have even got their second vaccination dose out of 90 officials five of them have received their second dose my advice to our athletes is to continue training for the games he addedbatra said that ioa has been exploring every option to create a safe passage for the contingent members to travel to tokyo minimizing the risk of them coming in contact with any outsider from the logistics point of view we may consider sending our athletes and officials together on a chartered flight from india these are one of the many possibilities we are exploring we want to minimise the contact of our athletes with fellow passengers on flight we want all our athletes to reach tokyo safely but first the flight bans need to be lifted so that we can work out a proper schedule we want to ensure no one gets infected before going to the olympics he stated