Equal pay for Indian paddlers: CoA
NEW DELHI: The country’s women table tennis players shall receive equal pay, awards and prize money as their male counterparts in all domestic tournaments, the Delhi High Court-appointed committee of administrators (CoA) to run the affairs of Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) ordered on Thursday.
In this year’s TT nationals, the men’s singles winner earned ₹2.75 lakh while the women’s singles champion got ₹1.80 lakh.
“Sports, it is often said, mirrors society. The discrimination prevalent in the society in terms of equal pay and rewards for men and women has persisted even within sport. But this doesn’t make it any less egregious. In fact, it is more so because the fundamental essence of all sport is fair-play, fairness in action, equality of access, and of opportunity,” the committee, headed by former Jammu and Kashmir chief justice Gita Mittal, said in an order.
The committee said it was
“extremely perturbed” about the prevalent discrimination in the payment of salary, prize money and awards to women and girls in table tennis, which is lesser compared to the male paddlers. “It is an established fact women and girl players are equally skilled and abled at the games at every level as men and boy players and are unfairly denied equality of opportunity as well as payment. The lack of parity in the payment of male and female sportspersons in India is in gross violation of, and antithetical to the principle of equality as enshrined…in the Indian Constitution as well as the Code on Wages, 2019,” it observed in the order, adding “it is high time that we bring down these barriers”.
In February, Justice Rekha Palli of the Delhi HC had suspended the executive committee of TTFI and appointed administrators to look into TTFI. The judge passed the order on a plea by CWG gold medallist Manika Batra, who had alleged national coach Soumyadeep Roy “pressurized” her to “throw away” an
Olympic qualifier match in favour of one of his trainees.
India’s top-ranked women’s singles paddler, who was left out for the Asian Table Tennis Championships, had also contended that the selection process was not transparent. In her plea, Batra asserted that the national coach, in a clear conflict of interest, was also running a private academy and on one occasion, “pressurized the petitioner to throw away a match only with a view to help one of his trainees at his private academy to qualify for the Olympics, 2020”.
In November last year, the court had constituted a threemember committee under the chairmanship of former Supreme Court judge, Justice Vikramjit Sen, to look into Batra’s allegations against the national coach. In February, the court noted the findings of the committee, which had said that there was conflict of interest of the coach. The court then appointed retired judge Mittal as chairperson of a three-member CoA to run TTFI’s day-to-day affairs.