NEW DELHI : The Delhi High Court on Tuesday asked the Boxing Federation of India (BFI) to place on record documents relating to the evaluation of the performance of boxers Manju Rani, Shiksha Narwal and Poonam Poonia, who were left out of the squad for the upcoming Women's World Boxing Championships, to be held here from March 15.
The court refused to give any interim relief to the boxers but asked BFI to explore the possibility of including them as reserve players with the squad if rules allow that.
The three boxers have filed a petition after they were left out of the Indian squad for the World Cup after being called for the camp and trials.
The counsels for the BFI informed the court of Justice Prathiba M. Singh that the federation has followed its selection policy which is placed on its website. After inclusion in the national camp, the players were evaluated on various parameters by the High-Performance Director and national team coaches.
"The selection was done without bias and the team was selected after carefully evaluating players over the weeks at the national camp," the BFI informed the court.
The High Court later directed the BFI to place on record the documents relating to the evaluation of the performance of the players. The court has also directed the BFI to consider keeping the petitioners as reserve players if there is a provision for the same.
The petitioners' counsel argued that BFI has included in the team players that had lost to these the petitioner boxers in the national championships held at Bhopal in December 2022.
In its argument, the BFI claimed that winning the national championship was only one criterion while the evaluation by the coaches was the other basis.