Decks cleared for Rupa Gurunath to become new TNCA chief

Chennai, Sep 22 (IANS) Former Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) President N. Srinivasan's daughter Rupa Gurunath is all set to become the first woman President of a BCCI state body at the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association's (TNCA) annual general meeting on September 26.

As per sources in the know of things, the decision was taken at TNCA's executive committee meeting on Sunday, and Gurunath is unlikely to face any opposition with the last date for filing nomination being September 24.

The other candidates who are front runners to form the panel are R.S. Ramaswamy for Vice President, K.A. Shankar for Joint Secretary and J. Parthasarathy for Treasurer.

The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the TNCA to hold polls to elect its office bearers. A bench comprising Justices S.A. Bobde and L. Nageswara Rao said that the election results will be subject to the final order.

Senior advocate P.S. Narasimha, who is assisting the apex court as amicus curiae, contended that only four out of the 38 cricket associations in the country had failed to adopt the new BCCI constitution. But the SC allowed the state body to go ahead with the elections.

On Saturday, Jaydev Shah was named the President of the Saurashtra Cricket Association (SCA) as electoral officer Varesh Sinha declared the name of the five office bearers of the SCA along with 11 apex council members duly elected to their respective posts.

While Shah was elected President, Dipak Lakhani was named the Vice President, Himanshu Shah the Secretary, Karan Shah the Joint Secretary and Shyam Raichura the Treasurer.

Son of former BCCI official Niranjan Shah, Jaydev Shah has played 120 first-class matches and captained Saurashtra for a record 110 times. Saurashtra were runners-up in the Ranji Trophy in 2012-13 and 2015-16 and also won the Vijay Hazare Trophy in 2007-08 under his captaincy. He announced retirement from all formats of the game in 2018.

Meanwhile, former India captain Sourav Ganguly is also set to be re-elected unopposed as the President of Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB).

Ganguly's five-member panel did not meet any opposition till the deadline for filing nomination, which was Saturday.

The CAB will hold its 85th annual general meeting on September 28.

The Supreme Court diktat on Friday had cleared the decks for Ganguly to contest for the president's post.

Initially, the SC-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) had said that even the period served in the working committee will be considered while determining the eligibility of the candidates, raising questions over whether Ganguly could seek re-election.

Ganguly had stated that there was a year's gap between his working committee tenure and taking over as an office-bearer of the CAB, but that may not have been enough as the new BCCI constitution calls for a three-year 'cooling off' period.

But all doubts were cleared on Friday by the CAB-appointed electoral officer Susanta Ranjan Upadhaya, who issued a clarification on the lines of the SC directive that only office-bearers will be considered while deciding the eligibility of a candidate.