10 July,2011 08:03 AM IST | | A Correspondent
The build-up to the Mumbai Cricket Association polls on July 15 is getting dramatic by the day.
Last month, the Dilip Vengsarkar panel felt they were done in by an illegitimate delivery from the Bal Mahaddalkar camp when nominations of former cricket stars Karsan Ghavri and Balwinder Singh Sandhu were not accepted by the Association since they were submitted 15 minutes late. The cricketers' panel went to court after which current president Sharad Pawar intervened and the duo's nominations became valid.
More recently, Pawar withdrew from the president's post race when his camp heard of a possibility of the Vengsarkar camp raising an objection to his Baramati address since all office bearers of the Association need to be residents of Mumbai or Thane.
On Saturday, Nadim Memon, a former Wankhede Stadium curator, now a member of the Vengsarkar camp, objected to former Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh's nomination for the president's post.
Deshmukh is up against Vengsarkar for the top job. "Vilasrao submitted his passport, electric bills and a letter of Poorna society to the election officer, but his permanent address is Latur as disclosed in Rajya Sabha. As per the MCA constitution Section 17 he has to be a resident of the city. We will go to the court on this basis,' said Memon.
Meanwhile, the Vengsarkar group was confident of success in the elections and said they had the right kind of feedback from the voters. If Vengsarkar beats Deshmukh and former secretary Pravin Barve, he will become the first cricketer to head the MCA since Madhav Mantri. Former India stumper Mantri was defeated by Manohar Joshi in the early 1990s and Ajit Wadekar's dreams of heading the association were crushed when Pawar defeated him au00a0decade ago.
