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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's timely intervention has paved the way for the return of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee as the president of the West Bengal Table Tennis Association.
A bitter contest between Chatterjee and state panchayat minister Subrata Mukherjee was on the cards in the WBTTA election slated for October 27 after the former CPI-M leader had filed his nomination at the last minute on Wednesday.
But Mamata personally telephoned Chatterjee yesterday, assuring him that Mukherjee was withdrawing his nomination.
"The chief minister told me to remain at the WBTTA helm and said that Subrata Mukherjee will not fight against me. I was always against a fight and would have withdrawn if he (Mukherjee) had contested," the former Lok Sabha speaker told PTI today.
Chatterjee, who has been the unanimous choice as president of WBTTA ever since the state body was bifurcated in 2005, had resigned from the post in July.
He was chosen to be president in the WBTTA's AGM held in June, but the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI), after finding some anomaliles, revoked the AGM and asked the old committee of the state body to reconvene the meeting, holding fresh elections by October 31.
