The Vinesh Phogat Case and the Limits of Sports Federation Autonomy
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Introduction
On 29th May 2026, a Supreme Court bench comprising of Justices Alok Aradhe and P.S. Narasimha refused to put a stay on the Delhi High Court Order, that had allowed Olympian Wrestler Vinesh Phogat to compete in the 2026 Asian Games trials. On the face of it, this looks like a routine interim order, but in reality it comprises of three distinct issues of Indian Sports Law under a single proceeding: the treatment of maternity within athletic selection policy, the scope of an athlete's anti-doping “whereabouts” obligations against competing constitutional duties, and the extent to which courts may review the internal decisions of a sports federation.
Brief Background of the dispute
Vinesh Phogat went on a maternity sabbatical in December 2024 after informing the International Testing Agency that she wishes to return in August 2025. She gave birth to a baby boy on 1st July 2025 and after resuming her training, the ITA confirmed her eligibility to compete from 1st January 2026. However, the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) led out an Asian Games Selection Policy on 25 February 2026 and a circular on 6 May 2026 that restricted the trial eligibility to medal winners from specified domestic tournaments held across the years 2025 and 2026. These were the years in which Vinesh Phogat could not attend any tournaments because of the maternity leave. Subsequently, the WFI also issued a show-cause notice against her, accusing her of indiscipline and anti-doping rule violations.
Phogat challenged both the show cause notice and the policy before the Delhi High Court. The Delhi High court opined that the WFI’s policy was ‘exclusionary’ and held that it does not give the federation any discretion to accommodate an athlete returning from maternity leave. The court permitted her participation in the trials scheduled for 30-31st May 2026.
The WFI then approached the Supreme Court against this order where the court declined to put a stay on it. Interestingly, the SC used this occasion to register its discomfort with the High Court’s willingness to intervene in sports administration, and separately noted that Phogat had missed a doping “whereabouts” test in January and this was an explanation tied to her duties as an MLA from Julana (Haryana), that the ITA had not accepted.
Maternity, Selection Policy, and Indirect Discrimination
The primary question this case raises is whether a sports federation’s eligibility criteria, can operate to disadvantage an athlete, precisely because she took maternity leave. The policy does not mention pregnancy or motherhood at all, but produces an exclusionary effect on women who have been pregnant. The Delhi High Court’s reasoning, that a woman should not be at a disadvantage for taking maternity leave echoes the logic that the Indian courts have applied in the context of employment. The most notable case is of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi v. Female Workers, where the Supreme Court read maternity benefits as integral to the dignity guaranteed under Article 21, and Air India v. Nargesh Meerza , which struck down service conditions that penalised women employees for pregnancy as arbitrary and discriminatory.
Vinesh Phogat’s relationship with the WFI is not an employment relationship and the Maternity Benefit Act of 1961 does not apply to athlete federation arrangements, at least, on the terms of it.
It is pertinent to note that Article 14’s prohibition on arbitrariness and the bar on sex discrimination under Article 15(1) apply with an equal logical force to any selection criteria administered by a body performing a public function, which the WFI arguably does as the national federation regulating an Olympic sport.
Internationally, the framework of the IOC on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination explicitly calls on federations to ensure that the policies do not penalise pregnancy or maternity and Article 11(2) of the CEDAW obligates states to prevent discrimination against women on the grounds of maternity also inclusive of opportunities that are tied to employment-like conditions. India’s ratification of CEDAW, even without. Direct domestic enforceability is a recognised interpretive aid that the courts have used to read content of Articles 14 and 21. The interim order of the Delhi High Court sits within this jurisprudence, but it also leaves open the harder doctrinal question- as to what threshold of accommodation a federation must build into its selection policy? and whether exclusionary” effect alone is sufficient to invalidate a facially neutral rule? Or whether some demonstration of intent or disproportionality is still required?
Anti-Doping Whereabouts Obligations and Competing Constitutional Duties
This is perhaps, a less developed angle in Indian commentary but is still, not any less significant. Under the World Anti-Doping Code, athletes in the registered testing pool are obligated to file accurate “whereabouts” information so that an out of competition testing can take place without issuing any notice. When an athlete misses a schedule test, without an accepted justification, it can itself constitute a violation to the anti- doping rule under Article 2.4 of the WADA Code. NADA’s domestic rules mirrors this regime and the ITA operationally administers the whereabouts requirements.
In the present case, Phogat’s explanation for missing her tests in January was that she was attending a session of Haryana Legislative Assembly as the sitting MLA, and the ITA did not accept this. The Supreme Court, while being sympathetic to her achievements, was also unambiguous that global anti-doping norms must be followed regardless of the public duties one has signed up for.
This raises an area of vacuum that Indian sports law has not resolved: what happens when an athlete’s constitutional or statutory public office, which is itself a position with a non-negotiable attendance obligation, collides with a quasi-private regulatory body’s testing protocol ?
The WADA Code does carve out exceptional and emergency circumstances as defences to the failure in disclosing whereabouts, but the legislative duty has not been tested as a recognised category internationally. The Narsingh Yadav doping matter remains India’s most cited precedent on the doping process, but it concerned a positive test rather than a whereabouts failure, and offers only a limited guidance on how Indian sporting bodies should treat the defence of public duty. Hence, this becomes an unoccupied ground for future litigation, particularly as more renowned athletes keeps on entering the public offices.
Judicial Review of Sports Federations: How Far Can the Courts Go?
The most consequential issue is institutional rather than substantive, i.e., how much deference do courts owe to a sports federation’s internal selection decisions? The observation of the Supreme Court that “easy and quick judicial interference in such cases could create complications in national and international sporting schedules,” and its remark that the situation would have been treated differently “if anybody else” were involved. This signals a real institutional concern about courts becoming the default forum for selection disputes and this concern has had a long pedigree. In the case of Zee Telefilms Ltd. v. Union of India, the Supreme Court has held that BCCI is not a “State” under Article 12, and therefore it is not amenable to writ jurisdiction in the same manner as a statutory authority is, but it also left open limited judicial review under Article 226 for certain public functions. Board of Control for Cricket in India v. Cricket Association of Bihar reaffirmed that even when courts could intervene where rules were applied arbitrarily or in violation of natural justice, federations could still retain a considerable autonomy over their internal governance. The 276th report of the Law Commission on the legal framework for sports also similarly recommended structured internal dispute resolution mechanisms, precisely to reduce the volume of selection disputes reaching the courts.
In the present case, the Delhi High Court’s intervention can be defended on the narrower ground that it was just reviewing the manner in which the WFI applied its policy. English courts drew a conclusion long ago in the case of R v. Panel on Take-overs and Mergers, ex parte Datafin (1987), which extended judicial review to private bodies exercising public facing regulatory functions, despite the lack of a formal statutory basis. Now whether the Supreme Court's discomfort reflects a disagreement with that distinction, or simply a policy preference for federations to resolve such disputes through their own appellate or arbitral mechanisms (such as the Court of Arbitration for Sport) before courts step in, remains unclear from the limited interim observations on record.
Conclusion
The Phogat litigation is unusual because in a single interim order, it touches maternity discrimination, anti-doping compliance, and the constitutional limits of judicial review of private regulatory bodies. Until now the Indian sports law scholarship has largely treated these areas in isolation. None of these questions have been settled completely by this order, the underlying writ petition challenging the WFI’s policy remains pending and the doping issue was raised but not adjudicated. What the case does make evident, is the absence of a coherent principle addressing athlete rights during life events such as maternity, and the absence of settled principles on how whereabouts obligations interact with other public duties. Until the Parliament or the National Sports Code addresses these gaps directly, courts will continue to be called upon to resolve them on an ad hoc, interim basis.
Author: Tanu Mehta is a third year BA LLB student at Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar
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