Choudhary had tendered his resignation the day the High Court was presiding over the interim report submitted by the committee on February 22. The people in the know said that the committee has accepted Choudhary’s resignation.
In his resignation, submitted through email, Choudhary wrote to Justice (retd) Gita Mittal, chairperson of the committee, “…due to personal reasons I am unable to discharge my duties as CEO of the Table Tennis Federation of India. I therefore resign for the post of CEO of the Federation. Please accept my resignation”.
In its report, the committee had informed the Delhi High Court that the TTFI’s current CEO is in Ajmer, the secretary general in Lucknow and the official who discharges its day-to-day functions is based in Kerala. The committee had highlighted that there was no senior official available in the federation’s Delhi office to look after its daily affairs and attend to the concerns of players.
The committee had also mentioned that the CEO had three staff members stationed at Ajmer with him.
ET earlier this week reported that the committee has sought relevant information from the staff members of the federation to dig deeper into TTFI’s affairs.
The information sought includes “details of the movable and immovable assets of the federation; budget of the federation; sources of revenue; budget allocation and expenditure; holdings in fixed deposit receipts and bank accounts; details of financial compliances and payments to be effected by the federation; all matters requiring approval and intervention of the committee and complete details of impending events, national and international”.
Disappointed with the way the federation was being run, the Delhi High Court on February 11 had ordered that the management of the sports body be taken away from its current office-bearers.
The directions were passed on a petition filed by Indian table tennis star Manika Batra. The Commonwealth Games gold medallist and Khel Ratna awardee, who was left out of the Indian contingent for the Asian Championships, had petitioned the High Court last year alleging that the national coach Soumyadeep Roy pressured her to “throw away” an Olympic qualifier match in favour of one of his trainees.
ET on Thursday had reported the three-member inquiry Committee, comprising two retired Supreme Court Judges, last month indicted the national coach Roy for making attempts to manipulate the match between Batra and his protege. The federation was also slammed by the inquiry committee for acting in a “hasty, precipitate and biased” manner against Batra.
