On the mat, WFI President Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh in a Nelson hold

On Friday afternoon, Wrestling Federation of India President Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, facing charges of sexual harassment from seven wrestlers, announced he was postponing the June 5 public meeting he had called in Ayodhya.

In his Facebook post, hours after leading news platforms published details of the two first information reports (FIRs) Delhi Police registered against him over a month ago, Brij Bhushan attributed the deferral to the ongoing probe into the sexual misconduct charges. It, however, emerged that the district administration denied Singh, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Lok Sabha (LS) member, permission to hold the rally at Ayodhya’s Ram Katha Park.

For several weeks, especially after some of India’s leading wrestlers returned to the protest site at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on April 23, until Delhi Police evicted them on May 28, Brij Bhushan issued statements challenging the allegations.

On May 19, he announced the Jan Chetna Maharally, describing it as a “sadhu-sant sammelan”, or a conference of seers, to “contemplate the immorality afflicting society”.

On the afternoon of May 29, Brij Bhushan posted a three-minute clip of a press conference that sadhus addressed in Ayodhya. The seers announced they intended to demand a review of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act since it is being “‘abused” to implicate seers, politicians, and eminent people.

Of the two FIRs that Delhi Police registered on April 28, Brij Bhushan was charged under POCSO, as one of the wrestlers was a minor, and penal provisions related to sexual harassment.

For nearly a fortnight starting May 19, Brij Bhushan toured Eastern Uttar Pradesh’s (UP’s) Gonda, Bahraich, Balrampur, Shravasti, and Barabanki to drum up support for himself and the June 5 meeting. In the context of the Congress and other Opposition parties alleging that the BJP leadership was protecting Brij Bhushan from an impartial probe and arrest, at least under the POCSO Act, as Delhi Police is under the Ministry of Home Affairs, it was a rare setback for Brij Bhushan that the Yogi Adityanath administration denied him permission.

Brij Bhushan may have deferred the public meeting but has continued to spend time with Ayodhya’s mahants, the chief priests of its sundry temples, touring his constituency and adjoining areas, sometimes in a helicopter, and receiving supporters at his residence in Vishnoharpur in the Gonda district.

While Brij Bhushan hails from Gonda, in the north of the river Sarayu, his political roots are in its south, in ‘Ramnagari’ Ayodhya, a centre of Hindutva politics since 1990 and critical to the BJP’s electoral preparedness for the LS with the inauguration of the Ram temple in January 2024.

Brij Bhushan is a six-term Member of Parliament (MP) from Eastern UP — five terms from the BJP and once in 2009 from the Samajwadi Party after the BJP expelled him for defying the Whip to vote in favour of the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance government in the no-confidence motion on the India-US nuclear deal.

He represented Kaiserganj in 2009, 2014, and 2019, Balrampur in 2004, and two terms from Gonda in 1991 and 1999. In 1993, Brij Bhushan was charged under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act for allegedly sheltering some Dawood Ibrahim shooters.

Brij Bhushan started his political career as a student leader at Ayodhya’s KS Saket PG College and was active in the 1990-91 Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Over the years, he has nurtured his links with the seers in Ayodhya, organising religious events and bhandaras (community kitchens). But last year, BJP’s two-term Faizabad MP, Lallu Singh, supported Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray’s plan to visit Ayodhya, which Brij Bhushan opposed.

Thackeray had planned to begin his Ayodhya tour, which he aborted in the face of Brij Bhushan’s campaign that MNS attacked North Indians. Interestingly, while the seers have shown support, the BJP unit in Ayodhya did not for Brij Bhushan’s June 5 meeting.

Over the past few days, support for wrestlers has grown. Nearly all members of India’s 1983 cricket World Cup-winning team appealed to the wrestlers to not throw their medals into the Ganges.

BJP’s Haryana unit and its women MPs have demanded justice for the wrestlers. Farmers of Haryana and Western UP, who had protested against the Centre’s farm laws, forcing it to withdraw them, have threatened a prolonged stir if Brij Bhushan is not arrested by June 9.