2-day 65th senior wrestling c’ship commences at LPU

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, February 20

The two-day 65th Senior National Wrestling Championships commenced at LPU campus on Saturday. Near 400 wrestlers from across India are in action in 10 weight categories.

Competitions for the five weight divisions 55kg, 60kg, 67kg, 82kg, and 130kg were held on the first day, and those of 63kg, 72kg, 77kg, 87 kg and 97kg will be held on the concluding day tomorrow. The Greco-Roman event is primarily supported by Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), Punjab Wrestling Association (PWA) and Jagjit Wrestling Academy (JWA).

One of the most prestigious wrestling tournaments of the country, it is witnessing fierce fights of many nationally and internationally renowned wrestlers for coveted national titles in different categories. Many of the participants include Olympians, Commonwealth Games’ champions, Asian Medallists, national/state winners, including Ravinder Khatri, Hardeep Singh, Gurpreet Singh, Harpreet Singh, Arjun, Gyanender. The bouts of Punjab, Haryana, UP, Services, Railways were worth witnessing.

The first day witnessed two phases, where in the morning hours the tournament was inaugurated by Lovely Group chairman Ramesh Mittal amid vedic mantra chanting and coconut offering as per Indian rituals. Mittal was accompanied by the WFI president and six-time MP of UP Brij Bhushan Sharan, Padma Shri and Arjuna awardee wrestler Kartar Singh, Jagjit Singh Saroya of JWA and other stalwarts of the game.

The second phase was flagged off by the chairman, LPU Chancellor Ashok Mittal and MP Chaudhary Santokh Singh. The chancellor congratulated the winners of the day and invoked them to continue bringing international glory to the country through their respective categories. Santokh applauded the energetic performances of the wrestlers. On this occasion, colourful march past by participating teams and melodious performances by LPU students provided soothing relief to the wrestlers.

Some of the bouts in 82kg category were between Harpreet of Punjab and Haryana’s Rohit, in 60kg Saurabh of UP and Avinash of Jharkhand contetsted, also Punjab’s Akash and Lav Kumar from West Bengal; 55kg division saw Chandigarh’s Sharavan and West Bengal’s Deepak, Rohit of Himachal Pradesh and Ajmalia of Kerala, M Chandra Mauli of Andhra Pradesh and Arjun of SSGB in action.

The competition is holding a strict implementation of the Covid-19 protocols.