A very senior BCCI official appeared concerned after Jagmohan Dalmiya was admitted to hospital following a heart attack last Thursday.
In the course of a conversation, he asked a very valid question: “Even if they [the 30 BCCI full members] search for a person good enough, with the leadership qualities to become the BCCI president, will they find one?”
And, as a rider, he added that the root cause of the predicament the BCCI finds itself in was the lack of will among officials of member units to make way for youngsters with fresh ideas; people had hung on to position and power for decades, he said.
Speculation Speculation was rife that Rajeev Shukla (IPL chairman) and Sharad Pawar were the front-runners to take charge should Dalmiya resign on health grounds. This standpoint has not changed in the last 48 hours.
Shukla has been neither treasurer nor secretary (the route taken by Dalmiya and N. Srinivasan before they became president), but he has been a vice-president from the East and Central Zones. He comes from Uttar Pradesh, which is a permanent member of the working committee.
At the last BCCI elections in Chennai, Shukla lost the contest for the treasurer’s post to Haryana’s Anirudh Chaudhry. He has the knack of getting along with all groups, but neither faction at the Chennai AGM nominated him for president. How things pan out for him in the coming days is anybody’s guess, and so it is for Mumbai Cricket Association president Pawar.
The 74-year-old Pawar is in power because the MCA amended its constitution to allow its president tenure longer than four terms of two years each. It’s amazing that only Shukla and Pawar are talked about when at least seven from East Zone are eligible to occupy the BCCI president’s post.
They are Gautam Dasgupta, Chitrak Mitra (Cricket Association of Bengal), K.P. Kajaria (National Cricket Club, Kolkata), Gautam Roy and Prafulla Kumar Mahanta (Assam Cricket Association), Amitabh Choudhary (Jharkhand Cricket Association) and Arindam Ganguly (Tripura Cricket Association).
New rules When The Hindu asked one of them on Tuesday why no one from East was being considered, his answer was: “The principle of rotation for the post of president was a good thing; there was a chance for administrators from every zone to show leadership qualities. But the bylaws have been amended now with full members allowed to propose and second a candidate from other zones.”
The memorandum of rules and regulations of the BCCI were amended in September 2012 to allow Arun Jaitley (from North Zone) to become the president for a three-year period from September 2014. But Jaitley withdrew from the DDCA elections a year before the Lok Sabha elections and with his party coming to power at the Centre, he also preferred to stay away from BCCI’s elections, in particular the president’s post. And he backed Dalmiya to become Board president a second time.
With Dalmiya’s passing away, the BCCI has to identify the most eligible person to lead the way, especially with India set to host next year’s ICC World Twenty20. He will also have to deal with a tricky situation when the Justice R.M. Lodha Committee submits its report to the Supreme Court, specifying the best practices and reforms required at the BCCI.
While a candidate needs two nominations from the same zone to contest elections at an AGM, in the case of a vacancy a candidate will need one nomination from the same zone (in this case East Zone). There are already reports that aspirants are looking to N. Srinivasan to make the election a unanimous affair. “He will think it over in the coming days and take a decision that will be good for Indian cricket,” said one of his close associates from East.
Awaiting SGM As of now, the full members are waiting for the Special General Meeting notice from secretary Anurag Thakur; he’s to do it within 15 days of the vacancy arising. How the SGM itself will transpire is a matter of speculation and mystery; the chairman elected from among the five vice-presidents (Gautam Roy, C.K. Khanna, T.C. Mathews, Ganga Raju, and M.L. Nehru) may face a situation where two representatives show up from a few member units.
The Rajasthan Cricket Association has been banned and so its representative will not be allowed to attend the SGM. There is also the issue of whether Srinivasan will be allowed to represent the TNCA; the BCCI has filed a case in the Supreme Court.
Two or three more names are being heard on the grapevine and it’s too early to talk about the numbers game. There could be the possibility of a candidate being propped up by four full members from East Zone. A candidate from East Zone will be great news for Indian cricket; any other outcome will be a failure of a system that underestimates a particular section.
