Rohit Pawar, an MLA who is also the grandson of veteran cricket administrator-turned-political veteran Sharad Pawar, has been elected as the President of the Maharashtra Cricket Association.
Rohit was elected unopposed among the 16 elected councilors in the election held at Pune’s MCA International Stadium on Sunday.
Rohit, 37, was elected as the MLA in 2019 from the Karjat-Jamkhed constituency. After coming up with a state-of-the-art cricket stadium in his family bastion of Baramati, he was fielded from the ruling Ajay Shirke faction. ,
The long-drawn MCA election saw a clean sweep of the Shirke group despite all sitting office-bearers being barred from contesting elections due to constitutional provisions.
In the MCA elections, 155 voters were divided into different categories and 16 councilors were elected from nine categories. After this 16 elected councilors have to contest elections. Rohit and Sunil Mutha had former Maharashtra captain Shantanu Sugwekar and Abhishek Boke as contenders for the life member categories.
Of the 24 votes cast for the two posts from the category, Rohit won 22 while Mutha won 21. Sugvekar and Boke, a distant grandson of Pawar Sr., both pressed for the much-delayed constitutional amendments. Settle for two and three votes, respectively.
Once all the elected councilors were from the ruling party, except industrialist Atul Jain, who won from the opposition faction, the office-bearers were elected unopposed.
Office Bearers President: Rohit Pawar, Vice President: Kiran Samant, Secretary: Shubhendra Bhandarkar, Joint Secretary: Santosh Bobde, Treasurer: Sanjay Bajaj.