Table Tennis player Manika Batra filed suit against TFFI (Table Tennis Federation of India).
Ms. Batra filed her suit as she was left out of the Indian contingent for the approaching Asian Table Tennis Championship to be held in Doha. Ms. Batra challenged the demand of TFFI to compulsorily attend National Coaching Camp to get selected for competitions as unreasonable.
She said that Table Tennis as an individual sport required individual training and a personal coach was best suited for training an individual in their specialized needs to work on certain strengths or weaknesses. Currently the rules do not allow for the presence of any personal coach or support staff at the National Coaching Camp.
She further notified the Delhi High Court that National coach Soumyadeep Roy had pressurized her to ‘throw away’ a game to get one of his personal trainees to get into Olympics 2020.
Sachin Dutta, senior counsel appearing for Ms. Batra, contended that just because of the rule of mandatory attendance at the National Coaching Camp, Ms. Batra who is one of the highest ranked internationally in her sport, was not selected to participate in the upcoming 25th Asian Table Tennis Championship, 2021, even though she would qualify on merit basis.
The Delhi High Court kept the case’s hearing for September 23.
Lawcutor 