The re-emergence of Railway stars yesterday flouted earlier information provided by the organisers about the players snubbing the event. Then today, lo and behold, B Bhuvaneshwari and MS Mythili (both PSCB) along with Railway's Montu Ghosh were known to confirm entries for the championships jointly sponsored by Bharat Petroleum (BPCL), Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) and State Bank of India.

Much of the confusion seemed to be laid to rest by the arrival of Mool Chand Chowhan -- secretary, Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) -- and joint chairman of the TTFI technical committee, Dhanraj Choudhary.

According to Choudhary, vagaries in the mail led to the local organisers -- the Maharashtra State Table Tennis Association -- being left in the dark.

It also led to the delay of the announcement of themain draw and seedings, only worked out today. Predictably, pride of place in the men's section went to undisputed India No 1 Chetan Baboor (PSCB) with NR Indu (Indian Bank) leading the women's section.

In today's action, Debrati Sarkar, Runa Roy, Anjana Basak (all Bengal) joined S Sangeeta (Tamil Nadu) in the main draw of the girls' singles.

In the sub-junior girls' section, Neha Arora (Mah), Suprasa Prasad (Kar) and Smruti Ram (TN) qualified for the main draw which gets under way tomorrow.

Debrati got the better of state-mate Munmun Basak 21-15, 21-19 while Runa Roy was the third Bengal girl to clinch a slot in the girls' singles main draw after a fourth round win over Maharashtra's Shweta Bhide.

In a keen contest of the sub-junior girls' fourth round, Smruti came from behind to snuff out Ria Dasgupta (Ben) 18-21, 21-15, 22-20. Suprasa also did not have things her own way as she was taken to the decider by Maharshtra's Juili Inamdar. Suprasa won 23-21, 19-21, 21-15.

But an all-Maharashtraencounter saw Neha book a berth in the main draw at the expense of Aparna Kulkarni 21-14, 21-18.

Seedings

Men's singles: 1 Chetan Baboor, 2 Arup Basak (both PSCB), 3 BS Thakur (Rly), 4 Deepak Thukral (PNB), 5 Subhajit Saha (Ben), 6 Nupur Santra, 7 Ganesh Kundu (Both Rly), 8 Souvik Day (Ben).

Boys' singles: 1 Subhajit Saha Sr (Ben), 2 saumya Deep Roy (PSCB-A), 3 Sukana Das, 4 Prithvi Raj Bose, 5 Shubham Chaudhary, 6 Ranbir Das (All ben), 7 Anil Kashyap (PSCB-A), 8 Saurabh Chakravorty (Ben).

Sub-junior singles: 1 Saurabh Charaborty (Ben), 2 S Apurva Ganguly (PSCB-A), 3 Jayant Chandran (Ben), 4 David Zodianpuia, 5 Amal Raj, 6 TR Rohit (all PSCB-A), 7 Milay Basak (Ben), 8 Yashar (MP).

Cadet singles: 1 Nilay Basak (Ben), 2 Snehashil Bhattacharya (Ben), 3 Subhadeep Das, 4 Somnath Das (Ben), 5 T Nikhil (TN), 6 Sandeep Goon, 7 Saurabh Pradhan (both Ben), 8 Arpit Bhopalkar (PSCB-A).

Women singles: 1 NR Indu (IB/TN), 2 MS Mythili (PSCB/TN), 3 Poulami Ghatak, 4 KasturiChakravarty (both Ben), 5 Montu Ghosh (Ben/Rly), 6 N Arul Selvi (TN), 7 Kanchan Basak (PSCB), Mouma Das (Ben).

Girls: 1 Poulami Ghatak, 2 Mauma Das, 3 Kasturi Chakravarty, Sushmita Roy (Ben), 5 Vishakha Roy (PSCB-A), 6 Mallika Parekh (Mah), BM Ashwini (Kar), 8 Sumana Bose (Ben).

Sub-junior: Sushmita Roy, 2 Nandita Saha (Ben), 3 BM Ashwini (Kar), 4 Mausumi Paul (Ben), 5 Debrati Sarkar, 6 Runa Roy, 7 Munmun Basak (all Ben), 8 S Prasana (TN).

Cadet: 1 Mausami Paul (Ben), S Sangeeta (TN), Runa Roy (Ben), 4 Munmun Basak (Ben), 5 Anushri Saha (Ben), 6 Shruti Prasad (Kar), 7 J Sawarna (TN), 8 Ria Das Gupta (Ben).