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India’s star freestyle wrestlers Bajrang Punia and Ravi Dahiya are the only two athletes eligible for the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI)'s A category annual contract expected to be renewed this season.
Under the annual contract system initiated by the WFI in November 2018, over 100 medal winners in various categories received financial assistance for practice.
The project, however, was temporarily halted in 2020 and 2021 due to financial crunch, but WFI is working to resume the annual contract system from this season.
Under the A category, wrestlers will be annually entitled to financial assistance of Rs. 30 lakh, while the B category will receive Rs. 20 lakh and Rs. 10 lakh will be given to those in the C category. The categories have been sub-divided into D, E, F and J for junior and sub-junior wrestlers.
According to Vinod Tomar, assistant secretary of WFI, Punia and Dahiya are the only two wrestlers shortlisted for the A category as of now.
“They (Punia and Dahiya) won medals in their respective weight categories at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games held last year in Japan,” Tomar said.
While Punia won bronze in men’s freestyle 65kg, Dahiya clinched silver in men’s freestyle 57kg in Japan.
Initially when the annual contract system was launched in November 2018, apart from Punia, Vinesh Phogat and Pooja Dhanda were grouped in A category.
Sakshi Malik, the 2016 Rio Olympic bronze medalist, and India’s two-time Olympic medalist Sushil Kumar were clubbed in the B category. However, considering their past performance at the world level, both Sakshi and Kumar were upgraded to A group.
Subsequently, several wrestlers who were beneficiaries of the funds under the annual contract system didn’t live up to expectations and were dropped from financial scheme.
Kumar (men’s 74kg) failed to impress on his comeback in 2018 at the Jakarta Asian Games. He also bowed out early at the 2019 World Championship and was then dropped from the scheme.
Pooja and Sakshi were also excluded from the project as they weren’t impressive in international competitions. The duo even failed to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
“We are in the process of chalking out a list of wrestlers who have performed in different age groups apart from seniors for the 2022 annual contract system,” WFI said.
