Renowned Veteran Table Tennis player Yogesh Desai who was Jt. Hon. Secretary of the Mumbai Suburban District Table Tennis Association( MSDTTA) & Amit Modi the Hon. Secretary of MSDTTA have tendered their resignation from the managing committee of MSDTTA. While Yogesh Desai has resigned under protest, dissociating himself from the manner in which the present Managing Committee is functioning, Amit Modi has resigned for personal reasons. But, their timing of resigning one after the other, has put a big question mark on the functioning style of MSDTTA.
Yogesh Desai
It may be recalled that for the past one year, Yogesh Desai had ideological differences with the managing committee with regard to the manner in which MSDTTA was functioning. He had openly opposed its basic structure and total lack of sensitivity and its disregard to the serious issues including ‘conflict of Interest’, particularly in case of current nominated Chairman. Exactly an year ago, in the meeting of MSDTTA, Yogesh Desai had pointed out that nearly three years the Chairman continued to hold the Office of Chairman of MSDTTA as well as Office of Profit as a Director of a Pvt. Ltd. Sports management Company, ignoring the spirit of Supreme Court Order accepting Lodha Commission report on this subject. Perhaps, it was not specific to the game of table tennis, but implemented in other sports.
Amit Modi
When Magzmumbai contacted ,Yogesh Desai, he pointed out that The normal practice of the sports association is to call for an AGM, inviting all the affiliated club’s representatives and submit the audited accounts and then form the Managing committee through fair , free and transparent election process, so that they get the ‘proper representation and say’ in managing the association of which they are integral part . According to Yogesh no such process was followed for the past several years. “Something that has not happened for long years here, with one after the another ad hoc committees working with nominated members of their preference. And, this is certainly not a good practice,” he added.
Both Mr. Yogesh Desai and Amit Modi had worked very hard for the past 5-6 years to promote the game of table tennis in Mumbai and introducing the Mumbai Super league ( MSL) was the brainchild of Amit Modi, who received a good support from table tennis enthusiasts that time. Both Amit and Yogesh are very popular among Table Tennis players in the suburbs of Mumbai. Yogesh in particular has always come forward to help the clubs in suburbs to organise tournaments, by way of sponsorship of trophies to players. He was also instrumental in organising direct telecast of matches on youtube during the recently concluded 26th National Masters TT Championship at Indore. He spent the money from his own pocket along with his friend Dr.Nitin Toshniwal to help the hosts.
Therefore, the resignations of both these stalwarts has certainly raised many issues which need to be taken up seriously by the parent body of Maharashtra, the Maharashtra State Table Tennis Association to whom we suppose the MSDTTA is affiliated. Also, in the interest of proper promotion of this game, the Table Tennis Federation of India need to issue some strict guidelines about the functioning of local level Table Tennis Associations, so that no such disputes occur in future.