But with things taking an ugly turn in less than two years, Shaji believes it was his biggest mistake in professional life to back the former goalkeeper for the top post.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\u201cI made the biggest mistake of my professional life. I must admit with responsibility and sense, that I made the biggest mistake of my professional life in supporting Kalyan Chaubey\u2019s election in the AIFF and then assuming the position of the Secretary-General.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\u201cI thought since he is a former player, who played club football for more than a decade, he would always stand for the game and at least passionately engage himself to bring change in Indian football. But sadly, my assessment was 100 per cent wrong. The only person who cautioned me before the election was Bhaichung Bhutia,\u201d he wrote in a letter to the Presidents and Secretaries of AIFF Member Associations and Members of the Executive Committee, in possession of IANS.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\u201cOn the eve of the AIFF elections, he told me, \u201cShaji be careful, he is using you and you will be the first casualty after a few months of elections. He was proved right, and I was completely wrong in trusting Chaubey for football reasons.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Shaji in this scathing letter has brought to light a number of issues including a case of undue favor shown by the president towards a production vendor and the national men\u2019s team head coach contract issue.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
In the letter, Shaji also reminisced how the members had worked hard for the election and how plans were made to take Indian football forward if the team got an opportunity to serve the federation.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have to remind you as you are fully aware, how hard we worked, amongst most of the State Associations, to prepare ourselves for the elections and our plans to transform football in India if we would have got opportunities to govern the game in India.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\u201cHowever, all such plans got derailed with the entry of this man as he was not in our scheme of things. When I look back, it is something like a movie, where one of the characters forced himself on us with his fancy stories and game plan to get elected in the prime position where he can rule with no responsibility and accountability resulting in the production of streaming platform series on AIFF, reflecting chaos and daily examples of mediocrity and not anything positive on the pitch for Indian football,\u201d Shaji pointed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have to remind you as you are fully aware, how hard we worked, amongst most of the State Associations, to prepare ourselves for the elections and our plans to transform football in India if we would have got opportunities to govern the game in India.<\/p>\r\n\r\n