The new governing body of the Wrestling Federation of India has been suspended on Sunday morning.
While the Indian Wrestling Federation elections were supposed to be held in June last year, the elections were postponed several times due to the wrestler-women struggle and lawsuits filed by various state wrestling associations. Following this, the Indian Wrestling Federation was suspended by the World Wrestling Federation for failing to conduct the elections for the
executives on time. In this background, the election for the administrators of the Wrestling Federation of India was held on Dec. 21 (Thursday) in Delhi. The results were declared on the same day.
Taking closer look at how Elections were conducted for WFI?
Through this election, 15 executives including the president, treasurer, general secretary and vice president of the federation were selected. There was direct competition between former Commonwealth gold medalist Anita Sheoran and Uttar Pradesh Wrestling Federation vice-president Sanjay for the post of federation president.
Anita Sheoran, from Haryana, contested for the post of President of the Wrestling Federation of India from Odisha. He had the support of star players like Sakshi Malik, Bajrang Punia and Vinesh Phogat, who campaigned against former federation president Brij Bhushan Singh for sexual harassment. Sanjay Singh, a close aide of Brij Bhushan, on the other hand, had promised to recreate the golden age of wrestling, the most medal-winning sport at the Olympics in recent times.
In this case, Sanjay Singh won the election by getting 40 votes out of 47 votes. Elections for the post of President were also held for Senior Vice President, four Vice Presidents, General Secretary, Treasurer, two Joint Secretaries and 5 Executive Committee members. Brij Bhushan’s team won all the 4 vice president posts. Uttar Pradesh’s Satyapal Singh Deshwaal from Brij Bhushan’s team was elected as the new treasurer of the federation. He defeated his opponent Dushyant Sharma from Jammu and Kashmir. Similarly, Brij Bhushan’s team also bagged the post of five executive committee members.
Wrestler Sakshi Malik has announced her retirement from wrestling to protest the selection of Brij Bhushan Charan Singh’s close aide Sanjay Singh as the new president of the Wrestling Federation of India. Wrestler Bajrang Punia announced his retirement from wrestling and said that he would return the Padma Shri award to Prime Minister Modi and left the award at the door of the Prime Minister’s residence on the 22nd. Following these two, Virender Singh Kum announced yesterday that he will not be involved in wrestling.
Meanwhile, Sanjay Singh, who was selected as the president of the Indian Wrestling Federation, announced that the national level wrestling tournaments for under-15 and under-20 would be held in Nandini Nagar, Konda, Uttar Pradesh by the end of this year.
The central government has announced the suspension of the governing body of the Indian Wrestling Federation due to dissatisfaction with the new management. The Union Ministry of Agriculture has taken this step. The suspension will continue until further notice.
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