Pawar v Patil in stiff MCA battle

Sharad Pawar has seldom lost an election in his long political career. When it comes to his 14-year long stint as a cricket administrator, he has hardly had to contest an election. Barring the Mumbai Cricket Association presidential election in 2001, which was his foray into cricket, and the back-to-back BCCI elections in 2004 and 2005, Pawar has always been elected unopposed at the helm of MCA, BCCI and ICC.

Come Wednesday, Pawar will face a stiff challenger in Vijay Patil, one of his erstwhile protégés, when the two of them square off for the post of the Mumbai Cricket Association president.

Patil, one of the two incumbent vice-presidents, has single-handedly created and maintained the Dr DY Patil Sports Stadium in Navi Mumbai. To his credit, the young administrator has made giant strides even in the MCA ranks since contesting his first election four years ago.

Patil shocked MCA regulars like Shripad Halbe and Milind Rege and overcame the then BJP corporator and now MLA, Ashish Shelar, to be elected vice-president in 2011 in his maiden election, which he contested as an independent candidate. Then, in the last election in 2013, Patil formed his panel - Cricket First - and made reasonable gains.

Besides Pawar, the former union minister whose Nationalist Congress Party is now in the opposition in the state assembly, there are other high-profile names in state politics contesting the biennial elections, forcing political parties to support their respective candidates. Interestingly, the ruling parties in the state - BJP and Shiv Sena - find themselves supporting different groups. With Shelar, a vice-presidential candidate, being a Pawar-Bal Mahaddalkar panel candidate, BJP has thrown its weight behind him.

Shiv Sena, on the other hand, has been vocally supporting the Cricket First panel. The party's supremo, Uddhav Thackeray, even addressed the group meeting on Monday, taunting Pawar for not retiring from the administration.

Political equations have traditionally made a huge difference in MCA elections, with a little over one-third of the total 329 votes being indirectly controlled by the government. The votes include 211 maidan clubs, 37 university and colleges and 81 offices which are eligible to vote. The 118 votes combined in the non-clubs category are usually influenced by political parties.

Despite not holding a post in the BCCI for almost seven years, Pawar still enjoys considerable clout in the board. It was evident in the manner in which he joined hands with Anurag Thakur to challenge N Srinivasan's group in the BCCI elections in March. It would naturally be seen as an embarrassment if the former ICC president were to lose a state association election to a relative newcomer like Patil.

Patil has gone the whole hog, with Cricket First challenging the ruling Pawar-Bal Mahaddalkar group for all the 17 seats, including those of the president, two vice-presidents, treasurer, two joint secretaries and 11 managing committee members.

Patil had appealed to Pawar for withdrawing his candidature, but Pawar decided against it since Patil brought up the issue of MCA not awarding enough matches to the DY Patil stadium, a private facility. That has resulted in the duo, whose families share a close equation, engaging in a bitter battle over the last week.