TTFI elections: Delhi High Court appoints retired Supreme Court judge Justice Vineet Saran as returning officer

The Delhi High Court has appointed retired Supreme Court judge Justice Vineet Saran as Returning Officer (RO) to conduct elections to the Executive Council (EC) of the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) [Ms Manika Batra v Table Tennis Federation of India Through The President and Ors]..Justice Rekha Palli ordered that the election process including voting and declaration of results be completed before November 15..Justice Saran will be paid ₹7.50 lakh besides secretarial expenses for his services. The order was passed after noting that the three-member inquiry committee, constituted through its previous orders, as well as the Committee of Administrators (CoA) opined that the federation’s affairs were not being conducted in consonance with the responsibilities entrusted on it..Justice Palli said that none of the existing members of the TTFI’s EC would be eligible to participate in elections.“In my considered view, at this stage, when the comments of the CoA point towards a very sorry picture in the functioning of the EC and, especially its observations that the EC is being run by only two or three persons, it would be against the interest of the sport if this issue is simply closed at this premature stage itself. The permission to the existing members of the EC to participate in the election would not only be against the interest of the country, but will clearly demoralise the sportspersons, whose faith in the system appears to have been restored to some extent, as is evident from the laurels brought to the Country by the sportspersons in the game of Table Tennis in the recent Commonwealth Games and other international events,” the Court said..The Court listed the case for further arguments on December 7. .The directions were passed on a petition by Table Tennis star Manika Batra who approached the High Court alleging that she was coerced by the national coach Soumyadeep Roy for fixing a match to enable a player undergoing personal coaching at his private academy to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics.Batra said that despite complaints to the federation, no action was taken and she was dropped from the national team for Asian Championship.It was also alleged that she has been continuously pressurised to take back the complaint and petition.While hearing the petition, the Court had, in March 2022, suspended the EC of TTFI for six months after finding that national coach did indulge in match-fixing during the Olympic qualifiers. .Advocates Kirtiman Singh and Akshay Amritanshu appeared for Batra. Senior Advocate Anupam Lal Das, along with advocates Anirudh Singh, Krishanu Barua, Parth Goswami, Akshay Kumar and Abhijeet Kumar appeared for TTFI.Senior Advocate R Balasubramaniam with advocates Apoorv Kurup, Vinayak Sharma, Nidhi Mittal, Damini Garg and Ojaswa Pathak appeared for R-2. Senior Advocate Rajshekhar Rao with advocates Shashank Garg, Aman Gupta, Areeb Amanuallah, Nishtha Jain and Muskaan Gopal appeared for Committee of Administrators.Advocates Hrishikesh Baruah and Pranav Sapra appeared for one of the applicants. Advocates Deepak Biswas, Aahna Mehrotra, Aimaja Tripathy and Harshit Gupta appeared for 11 Sports Pvt. Ltd..[Read Order].Delhi High Court appoints committee headed by retired Justice Gita Mittal to manage Table Tennis Federation of India