New Delhi: Incumbent Rohan Jaitley comfortably defeated former India cricketer and Lok Sabha MP Kirti Azad to be elected as the President of the Delhi and Districts Cricket Association (DDCA) for a third successive term.
The 35-year-old Rohan, son of former Union Minister late Arun Jaitley, secured 1,577 votes compared to Azad’s 777 in the race to the top position, which comes with a three-year term. His father had served as DDCA president for 14 years.
As many as 2,413 votes were cast from among the 3748 members, and 1,207 votes were required to win.
In 2020, Rohan was elected unopposed after Rajat Sharma resigned midway during his term. A year later, he defeated advocate Vikas Singh to claim a full three-year run.
Rohan had the backing of former BCCI acting president CK Khanna, who is considered an influential figure in Delhi cricket as he controls more than 1,000 votes.
Khanna’s daughter Shikha Kumar (1,246 votes), defeated Rakesh Kumar Bansal (536) and Sudhir Kumar Agarwal (498) to claim the vice-president’s post.
Ashok Sharma (893) became the secretary, while Harish Singla (1328) was elected for the treasurer’s post and Amit Grover (1189) won the joint secretary position.
All office-bearers are elected for a three-year term.
Anand Verma (985), Manjit Singh (1050), Navdeep M (1034), Shyam Sharma (1165), Tushar Saigal (926), Vikas Katyal (1054), Vikram Kohli (939) claimed the directors’ post, which goes to polls every year.
A member of the 1983 World Cup-winning team Azad, who represents Bardhaman-Durgapur constituency for the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress party, had alleged corruption in the DDCA in the run up to the polls.
He had alleged that the DDCA spent as much Rs 17.5 crore on installing floodlights when the much bigger Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad did the same for Rs 7.5 crore.
He had also accused the incumbent DDCA administration of spending only a fraction of the approximately Rs 140 crore it received from the BCCI in the last financial year.
PTI
