Bajrang Punia becomes first Indian to be seeded in Wrestling World Championships
New Delhi, Oct 11: CWG and Asian Games gold medallist Bajrang Punia is the only Indian wrestler from a strong 30-member squad to get a seeding at the upcoming World Championships as he has been seeded third in the 65kg category in men's freestyle competition.
Going by his form, Bajrang will be a strong medal contender at the World Wrestling Championships, scheduled to held in Budapest, Hungary, from October 20 to 28.
The United World Wrestling (UWW) has introduced the ranking-points based seeding system for the first time for the World Championships. Bajrang has 45 points in the ranking list released by the world body.
In the past, wrestlers were pulled into the brackets via a random draw of lots.
Recent ranking tournaments such as Tbilisi Grand Prix in Georgia and Yasar Dogu International in Istanbul have been used to determine the ranking points for the World Championship.
Turkey's Selahattin Kilicsallayan is the top seed (50 points) in the 65kg while Ilias Bekbulatov from Russia is second and Haji Aliyev from Azerbaijan is fourth.
Bajrang won a bronze at the 2013 World Championship and is aiming for the top prize.
"I had come here early to get acclimatized to conditions and am fully focused. I hope I can live up to everybody's expectations and return home with a gold medal," Bajrang said.
The 24-year-old has been training at the M trah za Olympic Training Center for the past two weeks, reaching Hungary before other team members arrived on Wednesday.
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Confident we are going to win Kerala: Shashi Tharoor
New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday expressed confidence in the victory of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala, saying the Congress-led alliance will win more than 75 seats out of the total 140 in the state.
Tharoor, who hails from Kerala, said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls, most of which predicted a victory for the UDF that has been out of power for 10 years in the state.
"We have been on the ground. I have campaigned in 59 constituencies across 12 districts out of 14. I was very confident we are going to win.
"Everything that I have picked up from not just my party colleagues and workers but also from other observers, media and others have always convinced me that we were going to score a comfortable win of above 75 seats. And all the (exit) polls have confirmed the same thing," he told reporters here.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls but in general he was not a big fan of exit polls in India.
"Because ours is not purely a homogenous society. We have to take into account gender issue, caste issue, class issue, regional disparities. You never get a convincingly large enough sample to give an accurate poll and now there is the additional complication that we have heard about in West Bengal this year that many people are unwilling to answer the questions of the pollsters," he said.
The Congress leader said normally, it used to be below 10 per cent that people said that they would not answer.
"Even if you are a reputable exit pollster, in Bengal, one polling company has said 60 per cent of people refused to answer. So, what is the worth of a poll where 60 per cent of your respondents have not answered," he said.
Several exit polls on Wednesday predicted a comeback by the Congress-led UDF in Kerala after 10 years, dethroning the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF).
Polling for the 140-member Kerala assembly was held on April 9. Results of assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Puducherry, besides Kerala, will be announced on May 4.
