Equal pay for India’s table tennis players, COA orders

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.

“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,” the committee, headed by former Jammu and Kashmir chief justice Gita Mittal, said in an order.

The committee said that 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. In this year’s nationals, the men’s singles winner earned ₹2.75 lakh while the women’s singles champion got ₹1.80 lakh.

“It is an established fact that 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 February, Justice Rekha Palli of the Delhi HC had suspended the executive committee of the TTFI and appointed an administrator to look into the affairs of the body. The judge passed the order on a plea by Manika Batra, who had alleged that national coach Soumyadeep Roy “pressurized” her to “throw away” an Olympic qualifier match in favour of one of his trainees. India’s top-ranked woman paddler, who was left out for the Asian Table Tennis Championships, had also contended that the selection process was not transparent.

In November, the court had constituted a three-member pael under Justice Vikramjit Sen to look into Batra’s allegations against. In February, the court noted the findings of the committee and appointed the COA.