NEW DELHI: Ahead of the much-awaited Wrestling Federation of India's (WFI) elections next week, the group of protesting wrestlers, including Bajrang Punia, Vinesh Phogat and Jitender Kinha, are busy holding closed-door meetings with high-ranking government officials at Shastri Bhawan and Sports Authority of India's (SAI) headquarters here.
They are requesting the intervention of authorities to ensure that candidates from the Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh's camp don't get elected to top posts in the August 12 electoral process.
The wrestlers' worry stems from the fact that 20 out of 25 state member units of the WFI have apparently pledged their support to Brij Bhushan in the upcoming elections. Only five state units - Gujarat, Assam, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir - are not on his side. Brij Bhushan himself can't contest the elections because of the provisions of the national sports code after completing three terms of four years each as the WFI chief. His family members are also not in the poll fray.
However, Singh's close aides and loyalists have filed nominations for all key WFI posts. Their wins could help Singh control the federation from behind the scenes. For the president's post alone, four candidates have filed nominations - two From Brij Bhushan's camp.
In such a scenario, the wrestlers are worried that if Brij Bhushan's panel comes to power, the whole purpose of their protest to get rid of the WFI from Singh's clutches will get defeated. The development prompted Bajrang and Jitender to abandon their training trip in Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan - where they were supposed to remain stationed till August 6 - and return to India to hold talks with the government. Vinesh Phogat, a leading face of the protest, returned from Budapest a little earlier.
As witnessed by this correspondent, both Bajrang and Jitender had an hour-long meeting with a top sports official at his JLN headquarters on Wednesday evening, accompanied by a director-level officer from the ministry. According to sources, the discussions largely revolved around the WFI elections and the alleged pressure-tactics employed by the Brij Bhushan camp to arm-twist the state member units to vote in his candidates' favour. It's been learnt that the wrestlers want the officials to hold talks with the member units and convince them to vote in favour of presidential candidate Anita Sheoran's panel, which apparently has the government's backing. The wrestlers see the ruling dispensation's intervention as the only way out to stop Brij Bhushan from controlling the federation through 'dummy' candidates.
When Bajrang was asked about his meeting with the sports official, he told TOI: "The whole focus is on WFI elections. I am not thinking about anything else. It's the immediate task at hand to ensure that Brij Bhushan's men don't run the federation. That's why Jitender and I have returned to India to hold talks with the government."
When asked about his participation in the upcoming selection trials for the wrestling World Championships, he said: "I haven't decided about it. I'll take a call on this later. The WFI elections and its outcome are more important."
