{"id":496860,"date":"2023-12-22T18:02:56","date_gmt":"2023-12-22T12:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/?p=496860"},"modified":"2023-12-22T18:02:56","modified_gmt":"2023-12-22T12:32:56","slug":"bajrang-punia-padma-shri-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/india-news\/bajrang-punia-padma-shri-protest\/","title":{"rendered":"Olympic medallist Bajrang Punia returns Padma Shri in protest over WFI chief election"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Amid protests against the appointment of Sanjay Singh, a close associate of outgoing president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, as the new head of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), India&#8217;s Olympian Bajrang Punia has returned his Padma Shri award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A day after Sakshi Malik announced her decision to leave wrestling, Punia made a statement, citing Sanjay Singh&#8217;s election as WFI chief is unacceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Punia sent a long letter to PM Modi\u00a0that began, &#8220;Dear Prime Minister, I hope all is well with you. I know you&#8217;re busy serving the nation, but in the midst of everything, I want to call your attention to the wrestlers in our nation.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"hi\" dir=\"ltr\">\u092e\u0948\u0902 \u0905\u092a\u0928\u093e \u092a\u0926\u094d\u092e\u0936\u094d\u0930\u0940 \u092a\u0941\u0930\u0938\u094d\u0915\u093e\u0930 \u092a\u094d\u0930\u0927\u093e\u0928\u092e\u0902\u0924\u094d\u0930\u0940 \u091c\u0940 \u0915\u094b \u0935\u093e\u092a\u0938 \u0932\u094c\u091f\u093e \u0930\u0939\u093e \u0939\u0942\u0901. \u0915\u0939\u0928\u0947 \u0915\u0947 \u0932\u093f\u090f \u092c\u0938 \u092e\u0947\u0930\u093e \u092f\u0939 \u092a\u0924\u094d\u0930 \u0939\u0948. \u092f\u0939\u0940 \u092e\u0947\u0930\u0940 \u0938\u094d\u091f\u0947\u091f\u092e\u0947\u0902\u091f \u0939\u0948\u0964 \ud83d\ude4f\ud83c\udffd <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/PYfA9KhUg9\">pic.twitter.com\/PYfA9KhUg9<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Bajrang Punia \ud83c\uddee\ud83c\uddf3 (@BajrangPunia) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BajrangPunia\/status\/1738156175734997051?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 22, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>He added, you may be aware that the nation&#8217;s female wrestlers began a protest against Brish Bhushan Singh in January of this year, claiming he had harassed them sexually. He joined them in protest as well. The government&#8217;s pledge of firm action caused the demonstration to end, Punia said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Punia continued, even after three months, there was still no formal complaint against Brij Bhushan, so in April they protested once again in the hopes that the police would at least register a formal complaint against him. However, since that didn&#8217;t occur, they had to file a formal complaint with the court. By April, there were just 7 complainants remaining from the 19 in January. This indicates that 12 female wrestlers were impacted by Brij Bhushan,&#8221; Bajrang Punia continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They protested for 40 days and there was a lot of strain on themback then. They headed to the Ganga River to submerge their medals. The leaders of the farmers then halted them. A competent minister from PM Modi\u2019s cabinet called them at that time and gave them assurances of justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bajrang Punia received Padma Shri award in 2019. The Arjuna, Khel Ratna award was also given to him. He said, Upon receiving these prizes, he was ecstatic. However, the sadness is heavier now. And the reason is that a female wrestler quit the sport due to her security, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bajrang Punia said, \u201cI can&#8217;t live my life as a Padma Shri awardee while our women wrestlers are insulted. Hence I return my award to you.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sanjay Singh, a supporter of Brij Bhushan Singh, won 13 out of the 15 positions to be elected president of the Wrestling Federation of India on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bajrang Punia received Padma Shri award in 2019. In the same year , The Arjuna, Khel Ratna award was also given to him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":496862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,125714],"tags":[80045,1206,64465,151798,161448],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2023\/12\/22175947\/ezgif-1-10d4f1d89a-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496860"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496860"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=496860"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=496860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- html is corrupted -->