WFI writes to Aadhaar authority over date-of-birth changes

The Wrestling Federation of India’s fight against over-age wrestlers intensified after the federation wrote to the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) seeking details on date-of-birth revisions of wrestlers.

The WFI also requested the statutory government body to preserve the history to ensure Aadhaar-based age verification.

In addition to this, the WFI also ordered all verified wrestlers to undergo fresh document verification while making void previously verified wrestlers.

“We have written to UIDAI highlighting the multiple cases of date of birth forgery and have also requested that history of all the changes made remains intact. We have learnt that some wrestlers were approaching Bangalore centers and getting their history erased,” a WFI source told The Bridge on Thursday.

The WFI had disqualified almost 500 wrestlers last week after a detailed verification pointed to inconsistencies in birth records. Around 300 wrestlers in men's freestyle, 125 in Greco-Roman, and around 50 in women's wrestling were disqualified after being found overage during the verification process for the U-17 National Ranking Tournament held at Gonda, Uttar Pradesh from 6-8 June.

Apart from the mandatory birth certificates used for age verification, wrestlers were asked to produce Aadhaar cards linked to their mobile numbers and provide OTP authentication through the Aadhaar app, which maintains a record of changes made to the document.

“After examining the Aadhar cards, we found that the wrestlers whom we had verified earlier on the basis of their original date of birth certificates had also been forged. So we have decided to cancel all verifications and everyone will have to go through the process afresh,” the source said.

In a circular dated June 18, the WFI has observed that “some wrestlers whose documents had previously been verified by the WFI Office were also found to be overage, despite the verification having been carried out on the basis of original documents submitted at the time”.

“To ensure greater transparency and uniformity in the age-verification process, it has been decided that all previous age verifications conducted solely on the basis of Birth Certificates shall stand cancelled. Accordingly, all wrestlers are required to undergo fresh document verification using their Aadhaar Card for age authentication,” the circular read.

“It was observed that a significant number of wrestlers were disqualified on account of being overage. It was also noted that many registered wrestlers did not report for the competition, possibly due to concerns that discrepancies related to age eligibility might be identified during the verification process,” it further read.