Journalist Rajat Sharma elected Delhi and District Cricket Association president

Veteran journalist Rajat Sharma was elected president of the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) after bagging 54.4 percent of votes in his favour.

Senior TV journalist Rajat Sharma and his team swept the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) elections, winning all 12 seats on offer. The DDCA elections, last held in 2013, were conducted under the supervision of a High Court-appointed administrator.

Renowned journalist Rajat Sharma has been appointed as DDCA president. (Twitter)

Sharma’s opponents, former Additional Solicitor General Vikas Singh, and Madan Lal, backed by Board of Control for Cricket in India’s acting president CK Khanna, were thoroughly routed.

Sharma polled 1,521 votes out of 2,791 to beat member of the 1983 World Cup winning team Madan Lal (1,004) and Singh (232) for the president’s position. Rakesh Bansal, brother of former DDCA president Sneh Bansal, won 1,364 votes to beat Shashi Khanna (1,086), wife of CK Khanna, for the vice-president’s post.

The secretary’s post went to former Sports Working Committee (SWC) convenor Vinod Tihara, who got 1,374 votes. His closest rival was Manjit Singh (998 votes).

Sharma’s camp said it would entrust former Test batsman and Ranji Trophy captain Gautam Gambhir to look into DDCA’s cricket affairs. Gambhir is already a government nominee.

Responding to a query on the RM Lodha committee’ s proposals on running a cricket body, Sharma said: “There are certain good things in the Lodha recommendations, but there are other key issues which have been debated. We’ll discuss them,” said Sharma.

Responding to a query on the RM Lodha committee’ s proposals on running a cricket body, Sharma said: “There are certain good things in the Lodha recommendations, but there are other key issues which have been debated. We’ll discuss them,” said Sharma.

Several state associations are against the Lodha reforms that have stringent clauses pertaining to age, tenure and conflict of interest by officials.

Towing the BCCI line, DDCA is set to duck the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The High Court-appointed administrator, Vikramjit Sen, who managed DDCA prior to the elections, brought the association under the RTI Act only last week but the body’s new administrators said they would reverse the move.

“The BCCI is not under RTI and DDCA doesn’t get any government grant. And why did Justice Sen, just before leaving, think about getting DDCA under RTI ambit? We will certainly not come under RTI,” secretary Tihara said.

Those elected –

President: Rajat Sharma

Vice-president: Rakesh Bansal

Secretary: Vinod Tihara

Joint-secretary: Rajan Manchanda

Treasurer: OP Sharma

Cricket director: Sanjay Bhardwaj

Woman director: Renu Khanna

Directors: Alok Mittal, Apurv Jain, Nitin Gupta, Nandan Sharma, Sudhir Kumar Aggarwal.