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Thursday, Jul 27, 2006

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Sport - Cricket

Panja's nomination adds further twist to elections

Special Correspondent

BCCI defers the disciplinary committee's proceedings against Dalmiya

KOLKATA: Amidst the heat and acrimony of the Cricket Association of Bengal's (CAB) annual general meeting and the elections, comes a twist. The former Union Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Ajit Panja's nomination papers for the president's post was found valid by the court-appointed observer and retired judge S.K. Foujdar here on Wednesday.

This leaves three candidates in fray for the post though many believe Panja would ultimately withdraw his candidature to facilitate a direct fight between the sitting president Jagmohan Dalmiya and his rival and Kolkata Police Commissioner Prasun Mukherjee.

The observer, along with the two presidential candidates, supported by a large number of lawyers from either side, took almost five hours to scrutinise about 118 nominations for the voters' list. Since the process will end only on Thursday, Mr. Dalmiya, who briefed the media later, said all the disputing parties were asked to meet the observer with supporting documents by 1 p.m. on Thursday. A complete list of voters would be out by 5 p.m.

Scrutiny

In Wednesday's scrutiny, papers of two clubs, Rangers and Bata SC, were rejected on technical grounds. The former club had sent in a blank nomination paper, while the latter's nomination was not signed by the chairman of the meeting.

With this, the total came down to 119 and out of this, three clubs have been put on the dispute list. They are Ballygunge Sporting, which was supporting the Mukherjee camp's joint secretary candidate Raja Venkat, Sir Gurudas Institution and Victoria Sporting.

It was also learnt that all the three clubs belonged to the Mukherjee faction.

Meanwhile, a city civil court declined to pass an interim order, as prayed by Dalmiya, for not appearing before a three-member disciplinary committee of the BCCI slated for Wednesday. Judge P.K. Sarkar asked the Board to file its written affidavit within two weeks to Dalmiya's suit challenging the legality and validity of its summons to appear before the committee. The court also asked Dalmiya's counsel to reply within another seven days to file his written affidavit to the objection raised.

UNI reports from New Delhi

The BCCI deferred the disciplinary committee's proceedings against Jagmohan Dalmiya after the former BCCI chief filed a suit in a Kolkata court challenging the legality of the summons.

Dalmiya was summoned to appear before the three-member committee on Wednesday afternoon for his alleged failure to reply to show-cause notices pertaining to accounts of the 1996 World Cup.

"The communication sent by your (Dalmiya) lawyer Soumendra Nath Banerjee was forwarded to the members of disciplinary committee. They have considered your request for adjourning the proceedings," BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah said .

Meanwhile, Dalmiya said he had no option but to contest for the top post in the Cricket Association of Bengal, as he needed a platform to fight the current BCCI regime.

The former BCCI chief said his current plight prompted him to disregard the State Chief Minister's suggestion that he should not contest for the CAB presidentship.

"I am hurt that I could not honour Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's words. Believe me, I had every intention to honour his words and there is a feeling of sadness that I had to stand. But I had to do it to prove a point," Dalmiya said.

Bhattacharjee had made an unusual public statement last month that he wanted Dalmiya to stay out of the July 30 CAB presidential race and asked Sports Minister Subhash Chakraborty to convey his message to Dalmiya.

Dalmiya said he had suggested several alternatives to Chakraborty but the government did not find them acceptable.

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