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In a sweeping crackdown connected property fraud, much than 500 wrestlers were disqualified from the U-17 National Open Ranking Tournament successful Gonda aft the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) introduced a stringent Aadhaar-based verification strategy that exposed wide discrepancies successful property and commencement records.
The tournament, held from June 6 to 8 successful Uttar Pradesh's Gonda district, saw astir 1,200 wrestlers registry crossed men's freestyle, Greco Roman and women's categories.
Apart from the mandatory commencement certificates utilized for property verification, wrestlers were asked to nutrient Aadhaar cards linked to their mobile numbers and supply OTP authentication done the Aadhaar app, which maintains a grounds of changes made to the document.
The workout led to the disqualification of astir 500 wrestlers — astir 300 successful men's freestyle, 125 successful Greco Roman and astir 50 successful women's wrestling — aft discrepancies emerged betwixt details mentioned successful commencement certificates and Aadhaar records.
In respective cases, the spot of commencement and day of commencement recorded successful Aadhaar did not lucifer those mentioned successful commencement certificates, galore of which had been issued years aft the wrestler's birth.
One of the cases that raised suspicion progressive a wrestler who produced a commencement certificate showing his day of commencement arsenic 2007 and spot of commencement arsenic Delhi's Narela area, portion his Aadhaar records indicated that helium was calved successful Haryana successful 2004.
The discrepancy prompted the WFI to question clarification from the infirmary that had issued the commencement certificate.
Following the verification process, lone 350 wrestlers successful men's freestyle, 185 women wrestlers and 160 Greco Roman wrestlers were cleared to vie successful the tournament.
WFI president Sanjay Singh said the federation was committed to ensuring a level playing tract and would proceed with the enhanced verification mechanics successful age-group competitions.
"We are determined to eradicate property fraud from wrestling. Genuine athletes endure erstwhile overage competitors enactment successful age-group events. The Aadhaar verification process has helped america place discrepancies and we volition proceed to instrumentality it strictly successful each aboriginal U-15, U-17 and U-20 competitions," Singh said.
The federation precocious suspended 5 wrestlers aft detecting fake commencement certificates during scrutiny of documents, underlining its resoluteness to tackle manipulation of property records.
WFI officials said the aforesaid verification protocol would beryllium enforced astatine upcoming age-group events, including the U-17 World Championship women's trials successful Sonepat connected June 14 and the men's trials successful Lucknow connected June 15, arsenic the federation intensifies its crackdown connected property fraud.
