Sravasti Dasgupta 
New Delhi: The Congress has fielded wrestler Vinesh Phogat from the Julana constituency for the upcoming Haryana assembly elections, hours after she joined the grand old party along with fellow wrestler Bajrang Punia in New Delhi on Friday (September 6).
The party released its first list of candidates for the Haryana elections and named 31 candidates, including former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda from the Garhi Sampla-Kiloi seat.
While Phogat has been given an assembly ticket, the party also named Punia as the working chairman of the All India Kisan Congress on Friday.
Earlier on Friday, Phogat and Punia ended weeks of speculation surrounding their political plunge and met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge before formally joining the party in the presence of Congress general secretary and MP K.C. Venugopal, Haryana in-charge Deepak Babaria and state unit chief Uday Bhan.
Bhan has also been named in the first list and will contest from the Hodal assembly constituency.
‘Only in bad times…’
Phogat was one of the faces of the wrestlers’ protest against former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief and BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who is accused of sexually harassing multiple wrestlers. After joining the Congress, Phogat said that her fight against the former BJP MP will continue despite her taking the political plunge.
“I thank the Congress very much because it is only in bad times do we realise who is your own. When we were being dragged on the road, all of you were with us except the BJP. You were able to understand our pain and tears. I am proud that I am associated with an ideology that stands against the injustice done to women and is ready to fight for their rights from the streets to the parliament,” she said.
“I want to tell the people, the pain that we have tolerated, we stand with all women who are feeling helpless. If I wanted to, I could have quit wrestling at Jantar Mantar. The BJP IT cell was also trying to establish that we were finished. They said I did not want to go to the nationals, but I did. I went to the Olympics but God wanted something else. I know when you do hard work, maybe you don’t get rewarded in that direction but in another direction.”
Phogat said that she will continue to stand with Indian women and would not let any athlete face what she and other wrestlers faced during their protest against Singh.
“I am happy to start a new beginning. I don’t want any other athlete to face what we have faced. Those parties in power may not be with them. But their brothers and sisters are there with them and they know what happens in sports and how athletes are not able to speak up,” she said.
‘I will stand with you’
“We will not be scared and won’t step back. Our fight is not over, the case is underway in court. We will not just be talking about desh seva (service to the country) but we will do it as well. I want to tell my sisters that if no one stands with you, I will stand with you and the Congress party too will stand with you.”
Phogat was disqualified from the Paris Olympics after she was found to be above the required weight for her 50 kg wrestling category match.
Her disqualification also reached parliament, as opposition parties demanded a discussion in the House, and protested particularly after Union sports minister Mansukh Mandaviya in his statement in the Lok Sabha devoted only about two and a half minutes of his six-minute speech to the events that transpired before Phogat was disqualified and the steps being taken to address the issue, and spent the remaining approximately four minutes detailing the financial assistance given to the grappler by the Indian government for her training.
When Phogat returned from the Olympics, Congress MP Deepender Hooda met Phogat at the airport and was present during her roadshow, fuelling speculation that she would be joining the Congress ahead of the assembly elections in Haryana.
On September 3, with the Congress Election Committee (CEC)’s deliberations underway over the distribution of tickets, Haryana-in-charge Deepak Babaria had told reporters that a decision on whether Phogat will be fielded will be taken soon.
The two wrestlers joined the party a day after both Phogat and Punia met leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi. Earlier, on August 31, Phogat met farmers at the Shambhu border, who have been protesting and demanding a legal guarantee for minimum support prices, and urged the government to listen to their demands.
With wrestlers’ inductions, Congress looking to make gains among Jats
Congress general secretary and Lok Sabha MP K.C. Venugopal, who was also present at the press conference where Punia and Phogat joined the party formally, said that while questions will now be raised about a “conspiracy” behind the wrestlers’ protest, other athletes had also joined various parties earlier.
“Leaders come through movements and these two are examples of that. These two leaders came through the biggest movement in this country. Now some are criticising that this is a Congress conspiracy. There are so many athletes in different parties, so many Olympians are there in different parties. Is that also a conspiracy? These big stalwarts of Indian sports history know which party they can trust. And therefore they chose [the Congress] as their party,” he said.
During a smartphone distribution drive yesterday, Brij Bhushan said that when women wrestlers levelled the accusations against him last year, he “had then said that this [was] a conspiracy of the Congress”.
“Senior Congress leaders from Haryana Deepender Singh Hooda and Bhupinder Singh Hooda are hatching a conspiracy against me. Whatever I had said on day one, I still stand by it. And today, the same thing is being said by the entire country,” PTI quoted him as saying.
Punia said that the wrestlers had paid the price for speaking up against injustice but will continue to raise their voice.
“We are paying for raising our voices for India’s daughters. Only the BJP stood with those who wronged women. Everyone else stood with us. The kind of hard work we have done during our fight for Indian women, the farmers’ agitation and Agniveers, we will continue our fight on the ground,” he said.
With the induction of the two wrestlers into the Congress, the party is looking to make gains among the Jat community, to which both Phogat and Punia belong; while also looking to corner the BJP over its inaction against Brij Bhushan; and cash in on the anti-BJP sentiment in the community with the ongoing farmers’ protests and the discontentment against the Agniveer scheme.
The party is also looking to consolidate its gains from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, where it won five of ten parliamentary seats in Haryana. The BJP, which had won all ten in 2019, was down to half its tally in 2024.