Wrestlers move HC for WFI derecognition for not holding trials

New Delhi: Three wrestlers on Wednesday moved the Delhi High Court seeking derecognition of Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) alleging violation of sports code by not holding trials for selecting players for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

The petition was mentioned before a vacation bench of justices Siddharth Mridul and Sunita Gupta who agreed to hear the matter along with the plea of Asian Games silver medallist Amit Dhankar, who too has alleged that trials have not been held for shortlisting players for the games to be held from July 23 to August 3. The latest petition by Joginder Kumar, Rahul Aware and Mausam Khatri, filed through advocate Rahul Mehra, sought directions to the Indian Olympic Association not to forward the name of any player who has been nominated without holding the selection trials. They have submitted in their plea that the International Wrestling Federation has recently changed weight requirements for five of the seven categories in the sport. "In view of the introduction of the new weight categories selection trials were even more imperative as wrestlers in a particular category would be competing against wrestlers who would have been in a different category in the erstwhile classification and as such past performance could not be used as a yardstick to replace selection trials in the instant case," their petition says. They have also sought directions to WFI to hold selection trials for the forthcoming games. In Dhankar`s petition, the high court on June 16 had issued notice to the Centre and WFI and had directed the sports body to inform it on the next date whether any selection trials have been held in the 65 kg category in which Amit wishes to participate. According to the petition, Joginder Kumar has been participating in the 100 kg and 120 kg categories since 2004 and had won gold in the National Wrestling Championships held at Kolkata in November 2013 and also at the Commonwealth Wrestling Championship held from the December 5-7, 2013 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Rahul Aware has been participating in the 55 kg, 58 kg and 60 kg categories since 2008 and has won gold in the Asian Wrestling Championship 2011 held in Uzbekistan as also Commonwealth Wrestling Championship 2011 in Australia, the petition said. It also said that Mausam Khatri has been participating in the 97 kg category and has been a gold medal winner in Asian and Commonwealth Games Championships.