IOA Appoints Ad Hoc Committee to Run WFI After Suspension of Newly Elected Body Led by Sanjay Singh

The Indian Olympic Association formed an ad hoc committee to supervise the operations of the WFI after the Sports Ministry decided to suspend the newly elected body led by Sanjay Singh.

The decision came after the new chief of the Wrestling Federation of India, Sanjay Singh, made an arbitrary decision to hold the U15 and U20 wrestling nationals at Gonda in UP, a Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh stronghold, flouting the norms of transparency.

The Committee comprises Bhupinder Singh Bajwa, IOC EC Member, and MM Somya in addition to Manjusha Kanwar.

The duties of the ad hoc committee will include the selection of grapplers, participation and formalities for the same of the wrestlers in international events, and the organisation of sporting activities in the nation.

Further, the committee will also be responsible for handling the bank accounts and overseeing the running of the website among other administrative duties.

The long-postponed WFI polls to decide the new president of the federation ended with a landslide win for Brij Bhushan-loyalist Sanjay Singh over former wrestler Anita Sheoran, and set in motion a series of unforeseen events in its wake.

Olympic and Commonwealth Games medallists Sakshi Malik, Bajrang Punia and Vinesh Phogat spearheaded the protest against Brij Bhushan, who was accused of sexual harassment of women wrestlers, since January of the year.

Sakshi stunned the nation when she announced that she would hang up her boots in protest of Sanjay Singh’s victory in the polls, while Punia returned his Padma Shri award. A couple of days later, Phogat wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister of the nation stating that she would also return her Major Dyan Chand Khel Ratna and Arjuna Award in the aftermath of the election.