Manohar all set to be elected unopposed as BCCI president

Mumbai, october 3

Shashank Manohar is all set to take over as the BCCI president at the board’s Special General Body meeting tomorrow after emerging as the only candidate, marking an unsually smooth transition of power following the demise of Jagmohan Dalmiya.

All the six units of East Zone unanimously proposed Manohar’s candidature for the president’s post, reflecting former chief N Srinivasan’s diminishing hold in the board.

The 58-year-old Vidarbha-based lawyer will take over the reins of the BCCI for the second time, his earlier stint was for the three years between 2008 and 2011.

Manohar’s anointment to the hot seat is a mere formality after the scrutiny of the nomination forms showed that all the six East Zone units have separately signed as the proposers.

A BCCI by-election needs only one proposer from the zone which is electing the president and Manohar has got the nod from all the six associations. Manohar’s was the lone nomination at the end of the 7pm deadline.

Interestingly, one of the proposers for Manohar was late Jagmohan Dalmiya’s son Avishek, who is representing his family’s club National Cricket Club (NCC) in the upcoming SGM. Srinivasan will not be attending the meeting with Tamil Nadu Cricket Association being represented by PS Raman.

The others who also proposed Manohar’s name are 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).

“All the six units of East Zone separately proposed Manohar’s name to show that they are firmly backing his candidature,” a representative from East Zone said. Manohar’s anointment also means that N Srinivasan now has little chance of coming back into the BCCI fold till 2017 when the Vidarbha man’s tenure ends.

Srinivasan had tried his best to muster enough support for his nominee to take control of the BCCI, including having a surprise meeting with another potential candidate, Sharad Pawar, at Nagpur recently. But the Pawar group was not keen to have any truck with the TN strongman.

Another group led by Anurag Thakur also backed Manohar’s candidature after Thakur’s meeting with the finance minister Arun Jaitley last week. The SGM is expected to be brief and would be chaired by one of the five vice-presidents of the BCCI. — PTI