Senior journalist Rajat Sharma on Monday beat World Cup winning India cricketer Madan Lal by 517 votes to become the new president of Delhi and Districts Cricket Association.
Sharma’s group swept the elections winning all 12 seats. Sharma got a total of 1531 votes while former Test cricketer Lal could only poll 1004 votes. The third candidate in the fray, advocate Vikas Singh, got 232 votes only.
It was a major setback for BCCI acting president CK Khanna, whose wife Shashi lost the vice-presidential battle against Rakesh Bansal, younger brother of former DDCA president Sneh Bansal. Rajesh beat Shashi by 278 votes while Bansal junior got 1364 votes to Shashi’s 1086 votes.
Sharma and his panel’s candidature was backed by a political heavyweight from the ruling party with the IOA president Narinder Batra throwing in all his might. Batra incidentally is a former DDCA treasurer.
“The moment Sharma got blessings from a senior cabinet minister, there was no chance in hell for any other candidate to win this election. What was not expected was a clean panel sweep. It will be good that Sharma will get a free hand to run the body. This also means that CK Khanna’s reign in DDCA ends unless he strikes some deal with Sharma,” a senior DDCA official told on conditions of anonymity.
