India’s No. 3 Diya Chitale has filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court after she was overlooked for the national table tennis team, which is reportedly headed by a former decathlete, with the Committee of Administrators (CoA) in the upcoming Commonwealth Games. But one player will be selected. who does not fulfill the eligibility criteria.
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Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) is run by a court-appointed CoA, headed by little-known former decathlete SD Moudgil.
Chitale’s petition prayed for a stay on selection as per the current selection criteria and his inclusion in the team, which was allegedly sidelined by the selection committee for the inclusion of Archana Kamath as Manika Batra’s doubles partner. went. It also wants the court to set aside the team’s ratification by SAI.
The selection committee chose the world number four doubles ranking of the Manika-Archana pair, but unlike the professional tennis circuit, where there are fixed doubles pairs, the ITTF tour does not have such strict and fast rules.
With Kamath not playing doubles in the Senior Nationals, Chitale, through his plea, has accused the CoA of “lack of transparency” and allowing a ‘conflict of interest’ case.
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“…the selection of respondent No. 1 to Ms. Archana Kamath also suffers from unfairness and lack of transparency. This is due to conflict of interest on the part of one of the members of the Selection Committee for Juniors, i.e. Mr. Bona Thomas John Ms. Archana is Kamath’s personal coach and thus is able to unfairly bias the selection committee’s choice in favor of Ms. Kamath,” the petition said.
The current criteria, termed as flawed by the decathlete-led CoA, give 50 points to the top-ranked player in the national rankings and 5 points to No.10.
For India’s top-10 international level players, the best ranked player gets 30 points and the 10th ranked player on the list gets three points.
and 20 more points, which are at the discretion of the National Selection Committee and the coach.
As per the criteria, one needs to score 51 points or more to get selected in the team.
Accordingly, Cheetah, with his national rank of 3, scored 40 points through these criteria and a full 20 points (given to all) from selectors and coaches and 12 points from his international ranking, bringing his number to 72. .
In Batra’s case, it’s a little different as she is India’s top-ranked international who got her 30 points and a full 20 points from coaches, taking her tally to 50.
While Batra’s national ranking is not much important as everyone knows his qualities, Kamat, who is second in the international list with 27 points, also got 20 from the coaches, taking his number to 47 which is more than Chitale’s. Less than five points. ,
Chitale, in his plea, has termed the actions of the CoA as “illegal, arbitrary and non-maintainable” and hence, should be set aside.
His plea said that certain subjective criteria have been taken into account to pave the way for the inclusion of Kamath.
“… said the action of incorporating subjective elements in the selection criteria for the benefit and inclusion of other players in place of the petitioner, and that too, without any prior notice, and in the 11th hour, without justification , is clearly arbitrary and liable to be set aside as a violation of Article 14 of the Constitution of India.”
The petition also said that Kamath was “ineligible” for selection as per the existing criteria.
“To this, Respondent No. 1 has misunderstood that Ms. Archana Kamath is not eligible for selection and should not have been selected as part of the Women’s Table Tennis team representing the country at the Commonwealth Games.
“This is because Ms Kamath’s scores under the existing criterion (47) as well as the new selection criterion (50) are below what is required to be among the top 4 players.”
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