Intense lobbying marked the eve of the election to the presidency of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, possibly the world's richest cricket association, at the Bengal Taj Hotel in Kolkata, where both rival groups are closetted with their supporters, on Tuesday.
Punjab Cricket Association chief and former BCCI president Inderjit Singh Bindra has nominated Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar as his candidate. Ranbir Singh Mahendra, secretary of the Haryana Cricket Association, is his rival.
Justice S Mohan, a former judge of the Supreme Court, has been nominated to conduct the election following a public interest petition filed before Chief Justice Ashok Kumar of the Madras high court.
The petition, filed by a local cricket club, had challenged Pawar's nomination from the North Zone. According to convention, it is the North Zone's turn to hold the presidency while Pawar belongs to the West.
Arun Jaitley, president of the Delhi and Districts Cricket Association, opted out of the race last week. The total strength of the voting house is 31 with one vote to be cast by the outgoing president in case of a tie.
Jaitley is now supporting Mahendra, who is a staunch supporter of outgoing president Jagmohan Dalmiya, who has been named patron-in-chief of the board. Dalmiya enjoys the support of the cricket associations of Bengal, Haryana, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, and the northeastern states.
Pawar is banking on support from the West Zone as well as associations from the South. A C Muthiah and Raj Singh Dungarpur, both former presidents of the BCCI, are backing him, as are Congress MP Rajiv Shukla and Dr Farooq Abdullah of Jammu and Kashmir. Pawar also hopes to get the support of the Bihar Cricket Association headed by Railway Minister and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav.
Bindra on his part sees nothing wrong in nominating Pawar as the PCA's candidate and cites the precedent of the late Madhavrao Scindia, who had been nominated by the DDCA in the early 1990s. Scindia belonged to the Central Zone.
Meanwhile, the struggle for power took a bizarre turn on Tuesday with Subhash Chandra Goel, chairman of the Zee television network, filing a first information report in Mumbai accusing Dalmiya of attempted murder.
While Dalmiya refused to comment on the matter, his supporters claimed that this was a blatant attempt to capture power through the back door.
"Everyone knows that Goel has an axe to grind because Dalmiya refused to give the BCCI telecast rights to the Zee network," one of the BCCI president's aides said. "Such tactics have upset even Pawar's supporters and may eventually go against him. Let us wait and see how things shape up in the morning. There is ample time between now and the election on Wednesday."
Though reporters were present at the hotel in large numbers, their movements were restricted to the lobby and nobody was allowed to go to the fifth floor where the rival camps were lobbying for their respective candidates.
