India's Best Boxing Asian Games Ever. Nine Days Later, the Federation Started Suspending Itself
Three golds in Aichi, the most India has ever won. Then the president of the Boxing Federation of India suspended his secretary general, and the secretary general suspended him back.
On 4 October India won three Asian Games boxing golds and topped the medal table. It has never won three before.
On 13 October the president of the Boxing Federation of India suspended his secretary general. Within 48 hours the secretary general had suspended the president back.
Both men were elected on the same day last year, in a result the Delhi High Court has not yet ruled on.
Seventy years, in one table
The history of Indian boxing at the Asian Games is almost always told wrong. Here it is, properly.
| Year | Games | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 1958 | Tokyo | India's first Asian Games boxing medals. Hari Singh Thapa silver, Sundar Rao bronze. |
| 1962 | Jakarta | First gold. Padam Bahadur Mall, lightweight, voted best boxer of the Games. |
| 1966 and 1970 | Bangkok | Hawa Singh wins heavyweight gold twice. No Indian boxer has matched it since. |
| 1982 | New Delhi | Kaur Singh takes gold. Then nothing for sixteen years. |
| 1986 | Seoul | Nine medals — four silvers, five bronzes. Not one gold. |
| 1998 | Bangkok | Dingko Singh ends the drought at 54kg. |
| 2002 | Busan | No medals at all. |
| 2010 | Guangzhou | Nine medals, two golds — Vikas Krishan Yadav and Vijender Singh. |
| 2026 | Aichi-Nagoya | Three golds. A record for golds. Not a record for medals. |
Two things fall out of that table.
There was no drought after 1962. Hawa Singh won four years later and again four years after that. The real drought ran from 1982 to 1998 — sixteen years and four Games, broken by Dingko Singh at a point when the sport had stopped expecting anything.
And six medals in 2026 is not a record. India won nine in 1986 and nine in 2010. What is a record is the three golds.
The Olympic record is thinner and has not moved in six years. Three bronzes, all of them: Vijender Singh at Beijing in 2008, Mary Kom at London in 2012, Lovlina Borgohain at Tokyo. Six Indian boxers went to Paris in 2024 and none medalled, with Lovlina and Nishant Dev both losing quarter-finals, one win from the podium.
Mary Kom's own record is routinely mangled. Six world titles — four at pinweight, two at light flyweight — plus her Asian Games gold at Incheon in 2014, at a third weight.
What actually happened to Bhiwani
Bhiwani in Haryana got called Mini Cuba for a reason. Four of India's five boxers at Sydney in 2000 came from the town. So did four of the five at Beijing in 2008, including Vijender Singh and Akhil Kumar.
They all came from one academy, built by Jagdish Singh, a Sports Authority of India coach who funded it by withdrawing his provident fund and mortgaging his house. Five of his students hold Arjuna Awards.
Then it came apart. The club was barred from state championships in 2013. Its last National podium was 2014, the year Jagdish Singh was transferred out of Bhiwani. By the 2016 Nationals it had no representation at all. The only outside money it ever received was a single grant of about USD 45,000 (INR 40 lakh).
But Bhiwani did not stop producing boxers. Sachin Siwach of Bhiwani was in the Aichi squad, and the town supplied Commonwealth Games gold medallists this year.
The honest version is narrower and more interesting. The institution collapsed and the pipeline survived it, reconstituting around Haryana's state academies and around women's boxing. One man's private gym carried Indian boxing for a decade. What replaced it was public, dispersed, and much harder to photograph.
The civil war
The federation's Elite Open Championship in Nahan is cancelled at the last minute. An inquiry committee is formed on 17 August.
Secretary general Pramod Kumar issues notice for a special general meeting to move a no-confidence motion against president Ajay Singh. He says he was served a cease-and-desist notice the same day. The meeting is pushed to 28 October to meet the 21-day notice rule.
Kumar writes to the Prime Minister alleging a “serious governance breakdown”, and to the Sports Minister and World Boxing. He alleges criminal intimidation, says state associations backing him have been threatened, and says he fears for his personal safety.
The same day, Indian Oil, the National Sports Development Fund and the Sports Authority of India sign a memorandum routing USD 4.5 million (INR 40 crore) into boxing over two years. The Sports Minister attends. So does Ajay Singh.
Singh's six-page order suspending Kumar takes effect. Grounds: financial irregularity, non-cooperation with the Nahan inquiry, and a work order worth about USD 170,000 (INR 1.5 crore) signed without finance committee approval, far beyond his USD 1,100 (INR 1 lakh) authority.
Kumar counter-suspends Singh.
The no-confidence meeting is scheduled. Singh's side says it is unconstitutional, because only a president may call one.
Each side's case is short.
Kumar says Singh runs the federation as a “fiefdom”, threatens state associations that back the motion, has disregarded High Court directions, and cut off his federation email.
Singh's side says the allegations are “baseless” and the meeting is unconstitutional, because only a president may convene one and a secretary general has no power to suspend a president. On the face of the BFI constitution, that last point appears correct.
What makes this more than a quarrel is the ground it stands on. The August 2025 election that put both men in office is still subject to the Delhi High Court's final verdict, and the Ministry told the court it did not think the election procedure was right. Earlier that year the Indian Olympic Association tried to install its own committee over the federation; the court stayed that too.
Who gains
- Ajay Singh, for now. He holds the chair, the constitution and the government relationship.
- The Ministry and SAI. The USD 4.5 million (INR 40 crore) flows through government channels, not the federation, so the money is insulated from the fight.
- Haryana's state academies. Half the Aichi medallists came through the public system that replaced Bhiwani.
- World Boxing. India just topped its flagship continental medal table.
Who is exposed
- The boxers. Three Asian Games champions at career peak, in a federation that could not hold its own national championship in August.
- The 2028 cycle. Trials, camps and coach appointments sit with officials currently suspending one another.
- State associations. Both sides are counting votes. The losing side's units expect consequences.
- Anyone relying on disclosure. BFI publishes no accounts, has no named principal sponsor, and no boxing-specific figure exists in the Asian Games spend.
This is not a personality clash and should not be reported as one. It is the fourth separate governance breakdown at this federation in twenty-four months: an attempted IOA takeover, a suspended secretary and treasurer under financial inquiry, an election still before the High Court, and now mutual suspensions at the top.
The pattern says the problem is structural. A federation whose election is subject to a pending verdict has no settled authority, which is exactly why every dispute inside it escalates to the courts, the Ministry or the Prime Minister's office.
Our position: this is the clearest case in Indian sport for the National Sports Board, and the clearest illustration of what its absence costs. A regulator with notified powers would have one job here — decide who lawfully runs Indian boxing before 28 October, not after it.
The question for Indian sport
Indian boxing just had the best Asian Games of its life. Thirteen boxers went. Six came home with medals. Three stood on the top step, which has never happened before.
Not one of them controls what happens next. Their national championship was cancelled in August. Their trials, camps and 2028 qualification pathway sit with two men filing orders against each other, in front of a court that has not ruled on whether either was properly elected.
None of this is new. Indian boxing has produced world-class fighters out of dysfunction for sixty years. Hawa Singh won twice without a system. Dingko Singh won when the sport had no money.
But that is the trap, not the consolation. Every time Indian boxing wins anyway, it proves the administration does not need fixing.
Bhiwani is the warning. One coach held the sport up for a decade, and when the institution around him failed nobody noticed for two years, because the medals kept arriving from somewhere else.
So: India has three Asian Games boxing champions and a federation whose president and secretary general have suspended each other. Which of those two facts will still be true in 2028?
The meeting called for 28 October, and whether it is held at all. If it proceeds and the motion carries, expect an immediate challenge in the Delhi High Court, where the 2025 election result is already pending. Also watch for any statement from World Boxing, which has a direct interest: it installed the interim committee that ran the federation into that election.