Elections to India's heavily divided cricket Board were caught in a legal maze on Thursday with its president Ranbir Singh Mahendra being accused of trying to scuttle the procedures for fear of losing the polls.
High drama unfolded at a posh city hotel early in the day as members gathered to elect new office-bearers of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
Events rolled with the Calcutta high court first appointing three observers to preside over the meeting after the Board's opposing camps sought overseers to ensure free and fair elections.
While the members waited for the observers to arrive, Mahendra announced that he had "adjourned" the meeting because the observers -- three retired Supreme Court judges -- hadn't arrived.
But his rivals, led by Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, who is pitted against Mahendra for the post of BCCI president, cried foul, saying the latter had no right to adjourn a meeting that had been convened after a two-days notice.
"This is a violation of the court order which gives the power to convene or adjourn the meeting only to the observers," former BCCI chief Raj Singh Dungarpur, a Pawar loyalist, said.
But former BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya, who is backing Mahendra, said the meeting was postponed because the members couldn't wait indefinitely for the observers to arrive.
"When the observers call the meeting we can convene again," he said.
His rivals said the Dalmiya camp was resorting to postponing the meeting because they feared losing the election.
"Clearly, they don't have the numbers and we do," Dungarpur told reporters.
Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah, who proposed Pawar's candidature for presidency, said Dalmiya, who is backing Mahendra, had rejected a compromise formula that current the president be allowed to continue for another year and Pawar then take over for a year.
"I don't know anything about this. No one has spoken to me," Dalmiya said.
Both sides took legal recourse to scuttle each other's plans and then blamed each other for going to court.
"Hindustan is a democracy. Everybody has the right to go to court," Abdullah said.
"Why are they going to court? They should instead come to the BCCI and discuss their problems," Dalmiya retorted.
Dungarpur told reporters that the wait now is for the two observers to arrive from Delhi and Chandigarh, and the elections may not be held on Thursday. The third observer is from Kolkata.
Meanwhile, BCCI members, tired from waiting through the day for the meeting, were seen wandering in the hotel lobby or lounging, with most saying they didn't know what was happening.
The Pawar camp said they would urge the observers to hold the elections anytime over the next 48 hours.
