Long delays in holding the elections, which were originally planned for March but have twice been postponed because of governance and procedural problems, means the IWF Executive Board will be in charge of the sport 13 months beyond its mandate, which expired in May this year.

Today’s decision, voted through by a majority of 69 Member Federations in Tashkent in Uzbekistan and 32 online, is good news for the 'old guard' on the Executive Board.

Many of them had been deemed ineligible as election candidates by an independent panel last month.

Now the candidate vetting process will be carried out again and overseen by a new Ethics and Disciplinary Commission, which is yet to be appointed and whose five members will be chosen by the Executive Board in the next few weeks.

The Ethics and Disciplinary Commission will then appoint an Eligibility Determination Panel, also comprising five independent members, which will carry out its vetting of candidates in an eight-week period after candidates are confirmed on March 2.

The elections are planned for June 25-26.

The IWF said in a statement that "there are no proposals to weaken the strict eligibility criteria against which candidates will be vetted".

Maxim Agapitov, the IWF Board member from Russia, called into question the ability of the existing Ethics and Disciplinary Commission, whose services are no longer required when he announced that he was challenging its most recent decision to reprimand him.

"It’s really important that today the IWF Congress considered the work of the Ethics and Disciplinary Сommission not appropriate to the level of tasks facing the IWF, and refused to ratify this structure," Agapitov told insidethegames.

The March Electoral Congress was postponed when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) wrote to every IWF Member Federation in February to outline its concerns about the IWF Board’s plans to hold elections before adopting a new Constitution, a schedule that clearly favoured any candidates on the current Board.

The IWF, which has been the subject of constant criticism by the IOC over the past two years, changed the dates and a new Constitution was, at the second attempt, voted through in August.

Elections were scheduled to follow in December but, when the deadline to publish a list of candidates was missed, the IWF again had to postpone the elections, which were due to be held today and tomorrow.

The company that carried out the eligibility checks, Sport Resolutions, was said to have sent some of its decisions too late – which it denied – but then the entire procedure was effectively ruled invalid because, the IWF said after taking legal advice, its Ethics and Disciplinary Commission had not been ratified in accordance with the new Constitution.

It was the Ethics and Disciplinary Commission that appointed Sport Resolutions.

That simple ratification did not happen today, either, so those who sat on it will no longer be involved and the IWF will name new members before the ratification takes place at another Congress on January 30.

Two weeks ago IOC President Thomas Bach said there should be no further delays in holding the elections, and that eligibility rules should be strictly adhered to if weightlifting wanted to regain the confidence of the IOC.

Weightlifting is on the programme for Paris 2024 but, as Bach has said, that situation could yet change.

It has been provisionally removed from the programme for Los Angeles 2028 and will only be included if the IWF satisfies certain conditions and undertakes a "culture change".

One of those conditions is punishing nations for doping by reducing their quota of places at Paris 2024.

There was no mention of that from the IWF today, but plans are in place and it is believed there is a proposal for nations to lose one quota place, from a maximum of six, for every doping violation up to three, at which point the National Federation would be banned.

Mike Irani, Interim President of the IWF, said after the Congress: "Thanks to today’s decisions, the IWF has been able to finish the year as it started: on track towards meaningful reform and culture change.

"We were asked to deliver three things: new governance, clean competitions and (new) faces in our leadership team.

"We’ve already delivered the first two.

"The third is certain to happen because of the provisions mandated by our new Constitution for more athletes and more women on the IWF Executive Board.

"And now we have a firm date (for elections)."

In a separate development, Agapitov said he was challenging a decision by the outgoing (and never ratified) Ethics and Disciplinary Commission to reprimand him.

A complaint against Agapitov by Attila Adamfi, the former director general of the IWF, was upheld by the Commission, as reported here by insidethegames yesterday.

It found that Agapitov had defamed Adamfi, had abused his office - at the time he was Interim President of the European Weightlifting Federation – and ruled he should pay Adamfi $7,000 for "reputational damage".

The validity of that decision is now in question, given after today’s decision the Ethics and Disciplinary Commission has never been ratified since the new IWF Constitution came into force.

Nevertheless, Agapitov told insidethegames he intended to challenge the decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

"I intend to protect my honour and dignity in accordance with the IWF Constitution and the Rules of the Ethics and Disciplinary Commission," he said.

"All the information that so deeply offended Mr Adamfi was taken from Richard McLaren's independent report (the McLaren Report into Weightlifting Corruption, published in June 2020 and conducted by the Canadian lawyer).

"Richard McLaren is guided by the legal standard 'beyond reasonable doubt' that the CAS fully accepts.

"All these facts are widely known and published more than a year ago.

"Mr Adamfi had the opportunity to challenge these allegations in court, but he didn’t.

"So I absolutely disagree with the decision of the Ethics and Disciplinary Commission.

"The Commission couldn't figure out quite complex issues. 

"In my opinion, Mr Adamfi's arguments were completely untenable.

"The decision of the Ethics and Disciplinary Commission will be applied for now, but I investigate all possible legal options."

The IWF has also chosen a number of host nations for future competitions.

In 2023, the IWF Youth, Junior and Senior World Championships will be held respectively in Albania, Mexico and Saudi Arabia.

The Youth and Junior events in 2024 will be in Peru and Spain, and the 2025 Senior World Championships will go for the first time to Norway.