New Delhi: The All India Tennis Association on Thursday insisted that the replacement of the panel of coaches for the Commonwealth Games programme was necessitated by the shifting of one of the training centres and had nothing to do with the controversy regarding the appointments.

“Now that training centre (for CWG hopefuls) will be in Pune, we have got three Pune based coaches. Nitin, Radhika and Nandan are from there. So it was better to have people from Pune,” AITA chief Khanna said. “There was no controversy. It was just a paper controversy. This has nothing do with that.”

Earlier, National Tennis Academy in Gurgaon had been marked as a training centre for the Commonwealth Games hopefuls along with DLTA complex in New Delhi. However, the appointment of Vishal Uppal as chief coach with Nar Singh, Arun Kumar, Kawaljeet Singh, Sukhbir Singh and Shalini Thakur as other coaches had raised many eyebrows. Even the sports ministry had initiated an enquiry into the selection process and at a meeting between ministry steering committee and AITA officials on Wednesday, a new panel was formed.

Former Davis Cupper Jaidip Mukherjea was named the head coach and big names like Nandan Bal and Enrico Piperno, Nitin Kirtane and former Fed Cupper Radhika Tulpule were also roped in.

AITA had said that lack of money was the main reason for picking the earlier panel, which they had described as a stop-gap arrangement. (PTI)