Brij Bhushan loyalist Sanjay Singh is new WFI president

NEW DELHI: Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh's close aide and his business partner, Sanjay Singh alias 'Bablu', was on Thursday elected as the new president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI). The candidates fielded by Brij Bhushan's panel comfortably prevailed over the Anita Sheoran-led group, securing 13 of the 15 posts contested.

Sanjay, who is the vice-president of the Uttar Pradesh wrestling association and hails from Varanasi, pocketed 40 votes while Sheoran - a former CWG gold medallist wrestler and one of the key witnesses who deposed against Brij Bhushan in the sexual harassment case - could manage only seven votes.

The WFI's electoral college comprised 50 voters from member state units and three of them were absent during the voting - Madhya Pradesh's newly-elected chief minister Mohan Yadav, Uttarakhand's Nav Prabhat and Chandigarh's Rajesh Sharma. Yadav, who didn't turn up for the polls, got only five votes for the vice-president's post.

The victory of Brij Bhushan's camp prompted Sakshee Malikkh - India's only woman wrestler to win an Olympic medal - to announce her retirement from the sport. She was one of the leading faces of the wrestlers' protest demanding action against Brij Bhushan over allegations of sexual harassment levelled by six female grapplers.

The outcome of the election will be subject to orders passed by the Punjab and Haryana high court in the writ petition filed by the Rohtas Singh-led Haryana Wrestling Association (HWA), which had challenged the move to allow Haryana Amateur Wrestling Association (HAWA) - backed by Brij Bhushan - to cast votes in the WFI polls.

The Supreme Court had, on November 28, set aside the stay imposed by the high court on August 11 acting upon the HWA's petition, thus paving the way for WFI's election.

The election will also pave the way for the revocation of the suspension of the WFI by the sport's global governing body, United World Wrestling (UWW). The UWW had, on August 24, banned the WFI for not conducting its election on time, which forced the country's wrestlers to compete as 'neutral athletes' at the 2023 Senior World Championships and other events.

The WFI's recently amended constitution had mentioned that the president needed support by a two-third majority of votes in the election. Out of the 47 votes polled, Singh needed 31 to ensure his victory with a special majority. With Brij Bhushan lobbying for him and holding several back-channel talks with the member state units in the run-up to the election, Singh handsomely managed to secure 40 votes with Sheoran's votes coming from Gujarat, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir bodies.

Speaking to the media after his resounding win, Singh said he will organise the nationals for under-20 and under-15 wrestlers from December 28 to 30 in Gonda. “The junior nationals will be held before December 31 this year. It's a triumph of thousands of wrestlers in the country who have suffered in the past 7-8 months. Those who want to do politics, let them do politics. Those who want to embrace wrestling, we welcome them,” he said.

As the election results were announced, chants of 'Har Har Mahadev' and 'Brij Bhushan Zindabad' and slogans like 'Sanjay bhaiya kya le ke chale, Brij Bhushan ki khadau le ke chale' (What did Sanjay carry with him, Brij Bhushan's wooden slippers) reverberated at the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) Bhawan here. Singh's supporters - present in hundreds - carried him on their shoulders to take out a victory march.

His loyalists blocked the entire stretch connecting the Qutub Institutional Area to Katwaria Sarai. Later, a convoy of around 25-30 vehicles lined up at the IOA building to take Singh to Brij Bhushan's official bungalow at Ashoka Road to seek his blessings.

In the evening, Brij Bhushan, who showed that he still holds sway in the country's wrestling landscape, held an hour-long closed-door meeting with the newly-elected WFI office-bearers - including Singh - and his supporters at a five-star city hotel.

The only consolation for Sheoran's panel was the victory of its candidates, Prem Chand Lochab and Devender Singh Kadian. Lochab was elected the secretary general, replacing the incumbent V N Prasood. Kadian, from Haryana, claimed one of the senior vice-president's posts.

Lochab, a former Railways Sports Promotion Board (RSPB) secretary, defeated Chandigarh's Darshan Lal. The victory of these two candidates suggested that a compromise formula was worked out since Singh won by a huge margin while votes were split for these two posts.

Brij Bhushan's camp swept all the other four vice-president posts and Uttarakhand's Satyapal Singh Deswal became the new treasurer.

All five executive committee members were also from the outgoing chief's camp.

NEWLY-ELECTED WFI'S OFFICE-BEARERS

President: Sanjay Kumar Singh (Uttar Pradesh) won by 40 votes

Secretary General: Prem Chand Lochab (Gujarat) 27 votes

Treasurer: Satya Pal Sigh Deswal (Uttarakhand) 34 votes

Joint Secretaries: Bellippady Gunaranjan Shetty (Karnataka) 34 votes and R K Purushottam (Andhra Pradesh) 36 votes

Sr Vice President: Devender Singh Kadian (Assam)

Vice-Presidents: Asit Kumar Saha (West Bengal), Jai Prakash (Delhi), Kartar Singh (Punjab) and N Phoney (Manipur)

Executive Committee (EC) members: M Loganathan (Tamil Nadu), Neivkuolie Khatsii (Nagaland), Prashant Rai (Chattisgarh), Rajnish Kumar (Jharkhand) and Ummed Singh (Rajasthan).


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