No Additional Trials Among Probables Does Not Vitiate Selection: Delhi High Court Upholds Equestrian Federation's Dressage Team Selection For Asian Games 2026

The Court held that once a decision has been made on the basis of achieved Minimum Eligibility Requirement results, the mere fact that further trials could not be held does not warrant interference, particularly where the explanation given is that the athletes were stationed across different parts of Europe, making further trials logistically unfeasible.

Dismissing two writ petitions challenging the selection list dated June 16 2026 issued for the Indian Dressage Team to compete at the 20th Asian Games, scheduled to be held in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan from September 19 to October 04, 2026. Dressage, one of three equestrian disciplines at the Games along with Show Jumping and Eventing, requires horse-rider combinations to compete across three tests, Prix St. Georges, Intermediate I and Intermediate I Freestyle, with riders ranked on their best two valid results.

Justice Mini Pushkarna observed, “This Court is of the considered opinion that the selection procedure followed by the EFI is in consonance with the Selection Criteria and the absence of subsequent competitive rounds does not invalidate the decision of the EFI. Failure to conduct additional competitions in terms of Clause 15(b) of the Selection Criteria does not undermine or vitiate the decision reached by the Selection Committee and the Ad-hoc Executive Committee of EFI, which are the deciding authorities under the Selection Criteria”.

“Thus, once the decision has been made by the EFI on the basis of Selection Criteria and achieved MER results, the mere fact that further trials W.P.(C) 8329/2026 & W.P.(C) 8290/2026 could not be held, in view of the aforesaid explanations given by the EFI, this Court finds no reason to interfere with the decision taken by the EFI in view of Clause 15(e) of the Selection Criteria”, the Bench further noted.

Advocate Kirtiman Singh appeared for the petitioner and Advocate Niyati Kohli appeared for the respondent.

The petitioner in the first writ petition sought inclusion of his PSG score from an event at Hagen, Germany, instead of his score from a subsequent event at Lier, Belgium, for the purpose of calculating his Minimum Eligibility Requirement.

The Court rejected this, holding that since the Belgium event had all three required tests, PSG, Intermediate I and Intermediate I Freestyle, the petitioner could not selectively substitute scores from a different event. The Court found no discrimination as the two other selected athletes had drawn scores from different events only because their events lacked one of the three required tests, which is expressly permitted under the Selection Criteria.

The petitioner in the second writ petition contended that Team MERs should have been ranked first and individual scores considered thereafter, and that no inter se trials among the six probables were conducted. Both contentions were rejected.

The Court found the plain language of the Selection Criteria provided for cumulative percentage scores across all three tests without distinguishing between Team and Individual MERs, and that the failure to conduct additional competitions was explained by the logistical impossibility of gathering athletes stationed across Europe.

“Moreover, once the entire selection process has been completed and the final results have been declared, the petitioner in W.P.(C) 8290/2026, cannot be permitted to challenge the said results merely because he was not selected in the top four athletes, particularly, when this Court does not find the decision of the Selection Committee and Ad-hoc Committee of the EFI to be manifestly arbitrary or unreasonable or in variance to the Selection Criteria”, the Bench observed.

Accordingly, both the petitions were dismissed with all pending applications disposed of.

Cause Title: Sudipti Hajela v. Equestrian Federation of India and Others (Neutral Citation: 2026:DHC:5180)

Appearances:

Petitioners: Kirtiman Singh, Senior Advocate, Kritika Gupta, Mohit Kumar Sharma, Maulik Khurana, Ritwik Saha, Advocates along with Petitioner in person (Through VC).

Respondent: Kapil Modi, Mr. Rishabh Parikh and Niyati Kohli, Advocates.

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