new delhi indian olympic association on thursday termed the exclusion of shooting wrestling and archery from the initial programme of 2026 commonwealth games as grave injustice to the country and said it will protest against the decision after consulting with the sports ministryioa secretary general rajeev mehta said the olympic body will write a letter to the commonwealth games federation cgf in a day or two to protest against the decisionit is a grave injustice to india leaving out shooting wrestling and archery shooting and wrestling are our major sports in cwg we protest against the decision and will write a letter to the cgf in a day or two mehta told ptiwill discuss the matter with the ioa president and then with the sports ministry regarding the future course of actionwithout shooting and wrestling indias cwg medal tally is likely to be reduced drasticallyshooting has been indias strongest sport in the commonwealth games with 135 medals 63 gold 44 silver and 28 bronze till now wrestling is in third spot with 102 43 gold 37 silver and 22 bronze medalsin the last cwg in gold coast australia in 2018 shooting and wrestling together accounted for 28 medals out of the countrys total tally of 66shooting gave 16 medals 7 gold 4 silver and 5 bronze while wrestling contributed 12 5 gold 3 silver and 4 bronzeon tuesday victoria was announced as host of the 2026 commonwealth games with the australian states regional centres organising the majority of events in a break from the traditional single host city modelan initial list of 16 sports including t20 cricket have been put forward for the games with further sports to be added later this yearif the australian organisers want to exclude shooting wrestling and archery from the games it will be difficult to reverse such a decision as the cgf general assembly had approved in october last year a new strategic roadmap under which athletics and swimming will be the only compulsory sports from the 2026 editionthe host cities have been given greater freedom to include disciplines of their choice from a proposed core list of 22 sports the core list includes shooting wrestling and archery besides t20 cricket beach volleyball and 3x3 basketballin 2019 the ioa had threatened to boycott the 2022 birmingham commonwealth games to be held from july 28 to august 8 this year after shootings exclusion from the programmethe threat was withdrawn after the cgf agreed to stage a separate commonwealth shooting championship as well as commonwealth archery championship in india with the medals from the event to be counted in the final standings of the birmingham gamesthe shooting as well as archery championship was to be held in chandigarh in january this year but cancelled due to the uncertainty posed by the covid19 pandemic