Wrestlers’ protest 2.0 can turn political, not good for anyone
The writing was on the wall when the country’s top wrestlers, including Bajrang Punia, Sakshi Malik and Vinesh Phogat, said earlier this month that they had lost faith in the sports ministry and had reservations about the Oversight Committee’s (OC) report. On Sunday, when they re-launched their stir, they claimed that the ministry and the OC members had stopped answering their phone calls.
The sports ministry formed the OC in January after top wrestlers levelled serious allegations of sexual harassment against the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, also considered an influential leader of the BJP from Uttar Pradesh. The immediate trigger was that despite the wrestlers filing a police complaint of sexual harassment on Friday, they claimed no FIR had been filed against Singh. They even approached the Supreme Court on Monday, seeking its intervention.
On the other hand, the sports ministry said it had met the wrestlers’ demands, and the protest was unjustified as the OC report was still being examined. In any case, the new protest seems avoidable. It reflects poorly on all stakeholders, including WFI, the sports ministry and the Sports Authority of India which takes care of sportspersons’ training and other expenditures. It does not augur well for a ministry that projects itself to be sportsperson-friendly.
It has been three months now, but the OC report is yet to be made public—that too about a president who has since completed his term but cannot contest elections. What seems baffling is that the ministry, silent until now, reacted on Monday and wrote to the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) to form an interim or an ad hoc body to conduct elections and manage the affairs of the WFI. Though it listed three findings that led to this decision, the letter was silent on the sexual harassment charges. The WFI’s Emergency General Council and Executive Committee meeting on April 16, where they announced elections on May 7, did not go down well with the grapplers either. The ministry nullified this on Monday.
Perhaps a bigger worry for the ministry and the government is that the protest threatens to turn political. The wrestlers have upped the ante. Earlier, they had asked political parties to stay away, but this time they said all parties were welcome. And the charges of sexual harassment are serious. Even their statements are slowly turning against the ministry. The longer the agitation, the more damaging it can be for the ministry.
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