At a gathering in Haryana’s Jhajjar region today, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi met prominent wrestlers in the country, including Olympic bronze medallist Bajrang Poonia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The conference takes place in the midst of wrestlers protesting the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) election results by returning their awards. Sanjay Singh, a former wrestling promoter and BJP MP’s aide Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, was chosen to lead WFI. Following accusations of sexual harassment against him earlier this year, the BJP MP was forced to resign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The protest against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh was spearheaded by Poonia, Olympic bronze medallist Sakshee Malikkh, and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Vinesh Phogat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Poonia said, Rahul Gandhi came to observe our wrestling routine. Gandhi did wrestling with them. He arrived to observe a wrestler’s daily routine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Poonia had earlier announced that he would return his Padma Shri and that he would not do so until sisters and daughters who are battling against sexual harassment receive justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Malikkh announced her decision to resign from wrestling in a news conference shortly after the WFI election results, citing her opposition to the success of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s aide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The centre has since halted WFI’s operations due to the junior nationals’ hurried declaration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The newly elected body appears to be (under) total control of former office bearers in total disrespect for the Sports Code, according to the statement from the Sports ministry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ministry said that WFI’s operations are conducted from locations under the supervision of former office bearers. Which is also alleged premises wherein sexual harassment of the players have been alleged and (at) present the court in hearing the matter, it continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wrestling Coach Virendra Arya said on the Congress leader’s visit, saying, nobody told us that he’s coming. He appeared out of nowhere as they were practicing here. When he arrived, it was about 6:15 a.m. after working out with us, he talked to us about his sport and workout, the coach said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coach also said, he is quite knowledgeable about sports. There will be nationals, but what will be done about this particular problem? What could Rahul Gandhi do? Only the administration has the authority to take action, he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The protest against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh was spearheaded by Poonia, Olympic bronze medallist Sakshee Malikkh, and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Vinesh Phogat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":497215,"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":[80045,428,110],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2023\/12\/27102612\/ezgif-4-cec82e73ae-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\/497214"}],"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=497214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497214"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=497214"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=497214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}