The Delhi High Court on Tuesday directed the Boxing Federation of India to place on record the documents relating to the evaluation of the performance of the players for the picking the squad for the upcoming IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships but refused to interfere in the selection itself.
According to a statement released by the BFI after the hearing on Tuesday, the court also refused to interfere with the selection but asked the federation to consider keeping the petitioners as reserve players if there is a provision for the same.
The Delhi High heard the petition filed by reigning national champions Manju Rani, Shiksha Narwal and Poonam Poonia challenging the BFI for being left out of the Indian contingent for the tournament scheduled to take place in New Delhi from March 15.
While the three boxers claimed in their writ petition that all the gold medallists at the national championships held in December 2022 at Bhopal were selected except for them, BFI maintained that the selection of the team did not take the Nationals gold medal into consideration.
They argued that is as a result of the revised selection policy for the men’s and women’s World Championships and the Asian Games that Manju (48kg), Shiksha (54kg) and Poonam (60kg) could not make it to the 12-member Indian side.
Instead of the traditional selections via trials method, the boxers underwent a three-week evaluation procedure based on various parameters in accordance with the new policy which was devised in consultation with High Performance Director Bernard Dunne.
According to PTI, a judge observed, “The professional boxer has evaluated all of you, I cannot interfere in this.”
With inputs from PTI