 "Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, Brij Bhushan, Bhushan, Brij")
Former Wrestling Federation of India chief and BJP leader Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh | (Photo: PTI)
Former BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh on Sunday accused the Hooda family of Congress of conspiring against him by using wrestlers as wager just as Pandavas had put Draupadi at stake.
Singh, a former chief of Wrestling Federation of India, was last year accused of sexual assault by several female wrestlers, who sat on a protest for weeks demanding a probe against him.
He added, “The Hooda family put the honour of daughters and sisters at stake. The future generation will not forgive them for this and they will always be held guilty for this.”
Vinesh Phogat and Bajrang Punia, who is an Olympic bronze-medallist, along with another Olympic bronze-winner Sakshi Malik spearheaded the agitation last year.
Asked about the wrestlers’ protest in Delhi, Singh said, “There was no protest of wrestlers in Delhi. It was a family protest. When we say wrestlers, a group comes. Are wrestlers not in Punjab, Haryana? Are they not in Maharashtra, Bihar, UP, Bengal and Himachal?”
He accused Congress leader Deepender Hooda of leading the protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. “Priyanka Gandhi also used to come.”
On Saturday, Singh, the former BJP MP from Kaiserganj, had said that Vinesh Phogat and Bajrang Punia were used by the Congress as “pawns” in a “conspiracy” to take control of the Wrestling Federation of India.
Singh first got control of WFI in 2012 after a bitter turf war with Deepender Singh Hooda.
The agitation forced Singh, a six-time Lok Sabha MP from the Kaiserganj constituency, to step down from the position of WFI head. He is currently facing criminal charges in a court.
After his ouster, his close aide Sanjay Singh was elected as the head of WFI but the body is yet to get recognition from the sports ministry, even though the world governing body for wrestling, UWW, has endorsed it.
Subsequently, the Congress released its first list of 32 candidates for the Haryana Assembly polls, fielding former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda from Garhi Sampla-Kiloi, state unit chief Udai Bhan from Hodal and Vinesh Phogat from Julana.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First Published: Sep 08 2024 | 5:14 PM IST
