Nearly 600 atheltes from 28 teams, including six boards, have confirmed their participation in the event. Top sprinters like Amit Khanna, CT Durai, Anil Kumar, Anand Menezes, P Ramachandran, Paramjit Singh, Jata Shankar and Lijo David would be seen in action. In the middle and long distance events Shivananda, Arun D'Souza, Gulab Chand, Amrish Kumar and Anand Kumar and jumpers like MVN Prasad, Sanjay Kumar Rai, Birdhan Mirandi and throwers Shakti Singh, Bahadur Singh, Gurjeet Singh, Pramod Tiwari and Satvir Singh were expected to hog the limelight in the men's section.

In the women's section, Jyotirmoy Sikdar, who won Asiad gold in 400 m and 800 m, will get an opportunity to return to form. She finished a poor fifth in theTravancore meet in 400 m.

Other notables runners are: Jaicy Thomas, V Jayalakshmi, Vinitha Tripathi, M K Asha, Rosa Kutty, KM Beenamol, Debi Bose, Ramla Devi, Monica Kalra, Sunita Rani, Madhuri Singh, Maduri Gurmule and Amman Devi, jumpers Arjun Markose, GG Prameela, Soma Biswas, Shilpa Sequeira, Anusuya C Roy, Angela Lincy and throwers Amandeep Kaur, Gurmeet Kaul, Phool Patti, Vinita Kumari and Neelam J Singh.