Shashank Manohar of the Vidarbha Cricket Association takes over as BCCI president after he was declared elected unopposed at a special general meeting at the Cricket Centre in Mumbai.
The meeting which saw Mr. Manohar elected unopposed as the BCCI President, lasted less than half an hour. He was the only candidate left in the fray for the election, in which the deadline for filing nomination ended last evening.
The election was necessitated by the sudden demise of Jagmohan Dalmiya, who had a short term of seven months after his election in March this year.
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All the six units of East Zone unanimously proposed Mr. Manohar’s candidature for the president’s post, reflecting Mr. Srinivasan’s diminishing hold in Board’s power politics.
A BCCI by-election needs only one proposer from the zone which is electing the president and it was the East’s turn this time. Mr. Manohar got the nod from all the six associations and was the lone nomination at the end of the 7 pm deadline yesterday.
Interestingly, one of the proposers for Mr. Manohar was Dalmiya’s son Avishek, who was representing his family club National Cricket Club (NCC) in the SGM.
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Mr. Srinivasan skipped the meeting and the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association was represented by P.S. Raman.
The others who proposed Mr. Manohar’s name were Sourav Ganguly from Bengal, Sourav Dasgupta from Tripura, Gautam Roy from Assam, Ashirbad Behera of Odisha and Sanjay Singh of Jharkhand State Cricket Association (JSCA).
Manohar has the responsibility to guide the BCCI to its stable self after a troubled era under Mr. Srinivasan, whose tenure was marred by acrimony within and outside the Board’s portals.
The 2013 IPL spot fixing scandal that singed Mr. Srinivasan, following his son-in-law and IPL team Chennai Super Kings’ former principal Gurunath Meiyappan being found guilty of betting on the T20 League games, led to the Supreme Court sidelining him from holding the reins of the BCCI.
Mr. Srinivasan had tried his best to muster enough support for his nominee to take control of the BCCI, including having a surprise meeting with Sharad Pawar, at Nagpur recently.
But Pawar’s group members were not keen to have any truck with the TN strongman, who has decided to keep away from the whole rigmarole.
With another group led by Anurag Thakur also backing Manohar’s candidature after his meeting with Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Delhi last week, the road was clear for Mr. Manohar.
Mr. Manohar, thus, is the biggest beneficiary of the change made in the BCCI’s statutes a few years ago permitting former office-bearers to return to power after finishing their terms.