Pitched battle between Kirti Azad and DDCA on proxies

NEW DELHI: The Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) has hit the headlines for the wrong reasons once again.
Following former India player and BJP MP Kirti Azad's allegations of fraud membership and systematic rigging of elections in the state association, the issue is being investigated by the oddly-named Serious Fraud Investigation Office.
Azad's list features senior DDCA functionaries who he maintains have "several proxy memberships in the name of relatives".
Azad's allegations are the continuation of a factional fight within the DDCA, with the ex-cricketer not seeing eye to eye with several DDCA administrators.
Azad showed documents to allege that big names like DDCA sports secreatary Sunil Dev and general secretary Sneh Bansal have something to answer for.
Also in the list are DDCA president Arun Jaitley, vice-president Chetan Chauhan and Narinder Batra, who is also the secretary general of Hockey India. Batra is accused of getting as many as 18 proxy memberships.
According to Azad, all the alleged proxy members have the same address as their respective relatives who man top positions in the association. This ensures a strong lobby for the election, Azad alleged.
DDCA members dismissed the allegations. A top DDCA official, who didn't want to named, told TOI that having members sharing the same address was no big deal.
"There can be outstation members and there can be several flats in a building as well. Relatives residing outside Delhi need a local address to become members. Therefore, they use the address of their local representative."
Bansal rubbished Azad's claims. "The total number of alleged proxies against top officials is less than 150. That can have no bearing on the election. We don't control their votes and we have nothing to do with them.
We just help them get the memberships," Bansal said, adding that the DDCA has not turned down any cricketer who wants to become a member.
Batra, meanwhile, went into counter-attacking mode. "I know only 10 out of the 18 names mentioned against my name. Those 10 are my relatives, including my wife, son, brother, sister-in-law, nephews and niece.
And we all stay together since we are a joint family. All of them have become members through regular procedure. The rest are forged. Kirti is doing all this to malign the DDCA because his sons were not picked to play for Delhi."
Sunil Dev, too, insisted that there was no foul play involved. "A few are my tenants and the rest relatives. They have become members going by the right procedure. Two of them have been members for almost 20 years now. I don't care what Kirti says."
However, Azad stands firm. "These names have come out of the hard copy given by the DDCA itself."
He also charged DDCA with ignoring top cricketers. "You have all kinds of people becoming members here but people like Kapil Dev and Anjum Chopra (former captain of the Indian women's team) are yet to be given membership."
Azad claimed that former Delhi and India players like Bishan Singh Bedi, Madan Lal, Surinder Khanna, Maninder Singh, Vivek Razdan and Gursharan Singh would join his battle.
Interestingly, Khanna, Maninder and Razdan had backed out of Azad's protest against the IPL in May this year.