Brijbhushan Sharan Singh loyalist Sanjay Singh on Thursday became the new president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) with his panel comfortably winning 13 of the 15 posts in the delayed polls, an outcome that triggered outrage among protesting wrestlers with Sakshi Malik announcing her retirement from the sport.
Sanjay, who is UP Wrestling Association vice-president and hails from Varanasi, secured 40 votes as against seven that his rival and 2010 CWG gold medallist Anita Sheoran got.
Given the tremendous interest Brijbhushan, the outgoing chief, has in the sport, it is expected that RSS-affiliate Sanjay, who runs a construction business, will consult him on policy decisions.
“It’s a triumph for thousands of wrestlers in the country who suffered in the past 7-8 months,” Sanjay told reporters after his huge win.
“We will respond to politics with politics and wrestling with wrestling,” Sanjay replied when asked about politics being played within the federation.
The panel of Sheoran, a CWG gold medallist, though managed to win the key post of secretary general with Prem Chand Lochab, a former RSPB secretary, defeating Darshan Lal 27-19.
Devender Singh Kadian, who runs a chain of food joints on National Highways and is considered to be close to protesting wrestlers, claimed the senior vice-president’s post, beating ID Nanavati 32-15.
The victory of these two candidates from the Sheoran camp suggests that a compromise formula must have been worked out since Sanjay won by a huge margin while votes were split in the elections for these two posts.
The Brijbhushan camp swept all the four vice-president posts with Delhi’s Jai Prakash (37), Bengal’s Asit Kumar Saha (42), Punjab’s Kartar Singh (44) and Manipur’s N. Phoni (38) winning the elections.
As its first move, the newly-elected body cancelled all the decisions taken by
the Bhupender Singh Bajwa-led ad-hoc panel, that had recently changed the Olympic selection criteria and announced hosting of senior National Championships
in Jaipur.
The Bajwa-chaired ad-hoc body had announced that the Olympic quotas won by the wrestlers will not belong to individuals but to the country and the quota-winning wrestler will also have to undergo selection trials to book his or her place in the national team for the 2024 Paris Games.
No grudge
Brijbhushan asserted that no vendetta politics will be played and even if the protesting wrestlers want to continue wrestling, they will be treated with all fairness.
“There will be no partiality. All will get support from WFI,” Brijbhushan said when asked if the federation would support the wrestlers who had launched protests against him. “We have to look after the game and not the mistakes of the wrestlers. If they will suffer due to their mistakes, then the federation will not be impartial,” he assured.
End of ban?
The WFI elections will also pave the way for lifting the United World Wrestling (UWW) ban on it. The world governing body of the game had banned the WFI for not conducting elections on time, forcing Indian wrestlers to compete as neutral athletes at the 2023 World Championships.
With inputs from PTI
