Haryana Election: Brij Bhushan Alleges Hooda Family 'Used Wrestlers Like Pandavas Used Draupadi'

Former BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh alleges Congress' Hooda family used wrestlers in a conspiracy against him, likening it to Pandavas wagering Draupadi.

Gonda (UP), Sep 8 (PTI) Former BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh on Sunday accused the Hooda family of Congress of conspiring against him by using wrestlers as wager just as Pandavas had put Draupadi at stake.

Singh, a former chief of Wrestling Federation of India, was last year accused of sexual assault by several female wrestlers, who sat on a protest for weeks demanding a probe against him.

At his residence on Sunday, he told reporters, "In the gambling which took place in Mahabharat, Draupadi was put at stake. The Pandavas lost. The country is still not able to accept their reasons for doing it." He added, "The Hooda family … put the honour of daughters and sisters at stake. The future generation will not forgive them for this and they will always be held guilty for this." Vinesh Phogat and Bajrang Punia, who is an Olympic bronze-medallist, along with another Olympic bronze-winner Sakshi Malik spearheaded the agitation last year.

Singh said, "Bajrang Punia's mental condition has deteriorated. He had put his wife at stake. I want to ask him why he went to play in the Asian Games without trials?" Asked about the wrestlers' protest in Delhi, Singh said, "There was no protest of wrestlers in Delhi. It was a family protest. When we say wrestlers, a group comes. Are wrestlers not in Punjab, Haryana? Are they not in Maharashtra, Bihar, UP, Bengal and Himachal?" He accused Congress leader Deepender Hooda of leading the protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar. "Priyanka Gandhi also used to come." On Saturday, Singh, the former BJP MP from Kaiserganj, had said that Vinesh Phogat and Bajrang Punia were used by the Congress as "pawns" in a "conspiracy" to take control of the Wrestling Federation of India.

Singh first got control of WFI in 2012 after a bitter turf war with Deepender Singh Hooda.

The agitation forced Singh, a six-time Lok Sabha MP from the Kaiserganj constituency, to step down from the position of WFI head. He is currently facing criminal charges in a court.

After his ouster, his close aide Sanjay Singh was elected as the head of WFI but the body is yet to get recognition from the sports ministry, even though the world governing body for wrestling, UWW, has endorsed it.

On Friday, Phogat and Punia joined the Congress with a vow of "not being scared or backing off." Subsequently, the Congress released its first list of 32 candidates for the Haryana Assembly polls, fielding former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda from Garhi Sampla-Kiloi, state unit chief Udai Bhan from Hodal and Vinesh Phogat from Julana.

(This report has been published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. Apart from the headline, no editing has been done in the copy by ABP Live.)