Three boxers moved the court for not being able to make it to the World Championship team
Not selected in the Indian team for the World Boxing Championships, reigning national champions Manju Rani, Shiksha Narwal and Poonam Poonia on Monday approached the Delhi High Court alleging discrimination by the national federation and sought its intervention in the matter. The Delhi High Court has accepted his writ petition and will hear the matter on Tuesday. In this writ petition, the three boxers argued that barring them, all gold medalists have been given a place in the Indian team in the National Championship to be held in Bhopal in December 2022.
According to it, “the petitioners have requested the concerned authorities to consider their names for selection in the Women’s World Championships, but have not received any fruitful result.” World Championship (2019) silver medalist Manju “When nine other boxers (who won nationals) were directly selected, why were the three of us from the Railways team not selected,” he told PTI.
He said, “We have written to BFI (Boxing Federation of India) this time and have not received any response from them so far.” Wasn’t the norm. According to the BFI, it followed the new selection policy for the men’s and women’s World Championships and the Asian Games.
In this, Manju (48kg), Shiksha (54kg) and Poonam (60kg) could not make it to the 12-member team. The new policy, drawn up in consultation with High Performance Director (HPD) Bernard Dunn, requires boxers to undergo an assessment process over three weeks. In this they are tested on various criteria. HPD, Bhaskar Bhatt and CA Kuttapa (chief coach of women’s and men’s teams) assessed the boxers and prepared a ranking list in which nine out of 12 national champions were ranked first.
Commonwealth Games champion Neetu Ghangas (634), Preeti (623) and Commonwealth Games bronze medalist Jasmine Lamboria (612) topped the evaluation test ahead of Manju (564), Shiksha (573) and Poonam (567) respectively. Got a place in the team. BFI secretary Hemant Kalita told ‘PTI-Bhasha’, “We have ensured that all boxers are aware of the new selection policy, it is also on the website.” They knew about the assessment even in the camp. We told them about the whole process in Hindi.
When Manju was asked if she was aware of this evaluation process, she said, “We were told about the evaluation during the camp but were not told that we would be ranked based on it. Referring to Neetu, he said, “Some of the girls who have been selected had not even competed at the national level, so what was the point of holding a national championship.
