Rohan Jaitley defeats Kirti Azad, re-elected as Delhi cricket president

Incumbent Jaitley’s panel comprehensively beat Kirti Azad’s group to take all the posts — five office-bearers and seven directors – for a three-year tenure. Jaitley beat Azad, the 1983 World Cup winner and Trinamool Congress MP, by 800 votes – 1,577 to 777 votes. Shikha Kumar was voted vice-president, beating her nearest rival Rakesh Kumar Bansal by 710 votes. Ashok Sharma was elected secretary, Harish Singla became the treasurer and Amit Grover the joint secretary.

This is Jaitley’s second full term as DDCA president, and his third overall. He first became DDCA president in 2020 and was re-elected in 2021 after beating supreme court lawyer Vikas Singh. While over 3700 members were eligible to vote, the polls, held from December 13 to 15, saw 2,463 votes cast. While most posts saw one-sided wins for Jaitley’s panel, the post of secretary saw a keen fight between Ashok Sharma and Vinod Kumar Tihara with Sharma beating the former office-bearer by 149 votes.

“Over the last three years, we have worked towards infrastructure development, members’ welfare, pensions, healthcare schemes, outreach programme for former players, changing the structure of age-group competitions, introducing Delhi Premier League, women’s league, and so forth. This mandate is a result of our hard work,” Jaitley said.