HC to hear on June 23 plea against wrestling federation

The Delhi High Court today agreed to hear on June 23 a plea of three wrestlers seeking derecognition of Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) alleging it violated the sports code by not holding trials for selecting players for the upcoming Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
A vacation bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul said there is no urgency in the matter as it has to be first seen whether any trials have been conducted or not and listed the matter along with the plea of Asian Games silver medallist Amit Dhankar, who too has alleged that selection trials have not been held for shortlisting players for the games.

The latest petition by Joginder Kumar, Rahul Aware and Mausam Khatri, filed through advocate Rahul Mehra, has sought directions to the Indian Olympic Association not to forward the name of any player who has been nominated without holding the selection trials.
During the proceedings, Mehra cited newspaper reports to substantiate his contention that players have already been shortlisted for the games to be held from July 23 to August 3.
He argued that the selection has been made in an arbitrary matter without holding proper trials as mandated in the sports code and sought directions from the court that no name be forwarded till final outcome of the petition.

The court, however, refused to pass any interim orders, saying the petition is identical to the one filed earlier by Amit Dhankar and which is to come up for hearing on June 23.
The three wrestlers have submitted 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 said.