Bombay High Court holds special sitting on Independence Day, allows wild card entry of badminton player for international tournament

In a special hearing held on Independence Day, the Aurangabad Bench of Bombay High Court allowed wild card entry for badminton player at an international tournament slated to be held from August 30 [Prathamesh Kulkarni v. UOI & Anr.].A Division Bench of Justices Ravindra V Ghuge and Arun R Pednekar allowed the plea by Prathamesh Kulkarni after it was pointed out that his name could not go through the participant list due to a clerical error by Badminton Association of India (BAI). The court concluded that the petitioner had never withdrawn his entry, which had been uploaded within the prescribed period and that he would be entitled to play at the Pune challenge subject to the rules of Badminton Association of Asia (BAA) and Badminton World Federation (BWF), being applicable.“For the sake of clarity, we hold that if there is no impediment, the petitioner would be entitled to play at Pune from 30.08.2022, by giving him a Wild Card entry, if permissible. However, this would be subject to the policies or guidelines of Badminton Asia / BWF”, the Court held..The petitioner had applied to participate in two tournaments of promotional nature. The India Junior International Grand Prix 2022 is scheduled to be held in Pune from August 30 and the India Maharashtra International Challenge 2022 will be held at Nagpur from September 13.The BAI had cleared his form in the female category by mistake.The petitioner tried to rectify the same, but eventually his name was not included in the men’s list as well, and his application was treated as withdrawn.He approached the Court seeking a direction to the BAI to generate a new and accurate BWF ID to enable him to participate in the tournament to be held in Pune from August 30.After issuing notice on August 12, the Court sat specially on Independence Day as the list of participants to the international challenge was slated to be sent at 5 pm that day. After a brief hearing the Court was convinced that the form submitted was in order, within the deadline and never withdrawn but that BAI had bungled up leading to the petitioner’s name not getting added to the participant list..The Bench further recorded the submission of the BAI that in the event Kulkarni misses the Pune tournament, the BAI would forward his entry to the India Maharashtra International Challenge 2022 which will be held from September 13 at Nagpur.“We record that there shall be no further mistake by Respondent 2 (BAI) with regard to the petitioner and the petitioner would be held eligible to play at Nagpur,” the 5-page order recorded..Advocates Amol Joshi and Sanket Jadhav appeared for Kulkarni. Assistant Solicitor General AG Talhar appeared for BAI and the Central government.[Read Order]