The Delhi High Court on Thursday remarked that the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) must come up with guidelines to enable participation of female athletes returning after maternity leave..Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma said that a balance must be struck between the interests of the country and the athlete. The Court made the remark while hearing Olympian Vinesh Phogat’s plea seeking directions to allow her to participate in the trials for the Senior World Wrestling Championship scheduled on September 14. Senior Advocate Rajshekhar Rao appeared for Phogat and told the Bench that the WFI has displayed “absolute arbitrariness” in the case and she was informed of the selection criteria only on September 7. “Effectively, it means I am out of reckoning for two more years and I am finished as an athlete,” he said. The counsel appearing for the WFI told the Bench that Phogat has not been banned from participation. He said that the medal winners from 2025 and 2026 are eligible for selection for this year’s World Championship and Phogat can participate at the state and national levels and make her way up. However, Justice Sharma said that such a policy is a "problem". “This is the problem. A woman, she will get married, she will give birth to a child and in that interim period, men will go and win medals and then they will qualify and someone will have to sit back at home and look after the children. There should be something that you have to do about this also, otherwise this is being very unfair," the Court said. It said that the situation in the legal profession was no different. "In this profession [law] also, when one is practising law, when they have children and when they come back, the clients do not come. This is something that we are trying to address because you have failed to. How unfair can this can be? Therefore, you have to make some guidelines which will balance the interest of the country also and the person also,” the Bench said. Justice Sharma added that she had been a judge for 35 years and things have changed very little. Ultimately, the judge said that she will decide Phogat’s plea and pass an order. .The Court was hearing the two fresh applications moved by Phogat in her already pending petitions before the High Court. In one application, Phogat challenged WFI’s September 7 circular prescribing the eligibility criteria for the selection trials for the 2026 World Wrestling Championship. In the other application, she sought an early hearing of her petition challenging the disciplinary proceedings which stemmed from the show-cause notices issued to her over alleged indiscipline, violations of anti-doping regulations and misconduct during the 2026 Asian Games selection trials.In the two petitions, Phogat is challenging WFI's selection framework on grounds of excluding her participation in the championship starting from October 24, after her return to competitive wrestling following pregnancy, childbirth and post-partum recovery. Her other petition seeks directions to the WFI to implement a fair, transparent and structured framework governing the return of women athletes to competitive sport following pregnancy, childbirth and post-partum recovery.
