Sports minister MS Gill flayed the 'casualness' of Indian cricketcaptain MahendraSingh Dhoni andHarbhajan Singh on Thursday for skipping the Padma Shri function and said theMinistry would soon issue a circular to ensure that sportspersons treatnational awards with utmost respect.

Dhoni and hisIndia teammate Harbhajan were conspicuous by their absence at the RashtrapatiBhavan ceremony where they were expected to accept the Padma Shri awards frompresident Pratibha Patil.

Even thoughreports claimed the duo gave it a miss because of their commercial pre-occupations,Harbhajan cited family commitment as the reason for skipping the event.

"To beselected for such a national honour and then getting the opportunity ofreceiving it from the president of India is a rare good fortune and must betreated with greatest respect. I certainly don't approve of any casualness inanyone's approach," Gill said.

"We willsoon issue a new circular for public information and send a copy to the HomeMinistry, which would inform the sportspersons about our policy to ensure that theplayers don't treat national awards with such casualness," Gill said.

"As the Sportsminister, I was involved with national sports awards last year where thepresident gave away Arjuna, Dronacharya, Dhyan Chand and Tenzing Norgay awards.I was very surprised to see that a number of sportspersons sent substitutes tothe ceremony. For me, this is totally unacceptable."

He said it wasalso a clear violation of the Sports Ministry instruction to either personallyreceive the award or, in case of unavoidable reasons, send a letter of apologywell before the event. "And if there are any genuine reasons prevent themfrom turning up, they must send an apology in advance so that at a later datethe Sports minister can give them the award," he added.