There was relief in some quarters of the Delhi and District Cricket Association on Monday with the Delhi high court setting aside a trial court order restraining six office bearers from discharging their functions saying it was not sustainable in the eyes of law.
The officials in question are DDCA joint secretaries Ravi Jain, Ravinder Manchanda, Subhash Sharma, Vivek Gupta and also members of the executive committee, Ashok Sharma and S.K. Chaudhary, who had challenged the trial court’s March 13 order.
Justice V.K. Shali asked the trial court to decide the case on merit after going through the evidence produced by both sides and directed them to appear before the lower court on July 30.
“I feel that the order passed by the learned trial court is not sustainable in the eyes of law and the same is set aside. Both the appeals are allowed.
“The matter is directed to be decided by the trial court on merits, after permitting the parties to adduce evidence with regard to the merits of the case,” Justice Shali said.
The appeals were filed by the DDCA and its six aggrieved office bearers against the the trial court’s March 13 order.
The lower court had on March 13 restrained the six from discharging any function as the office bearers of DDCA on a plea by two candidates who were unsuccessful in elections for the post of joint secretary (Accounts) and who had alleged that the elections were not held in a free and fair manner.
Rajneesh Aggarwal and Vinod Garg had challenged the elections to six of the 16 DDCA posts.
The trial court relied on CCTV footage submitted by Aggarwal to hold that “there was chaos within the voting arena” and he was not allowed to cast the 99 proxy votes which he held.
The high court while setting aside the trial court’s verdict, held that the “trial judge grossly erred by ignoring the written statement filed by the returning officer as well as the report of the chief election officer, who is a retired judge of the Delhi high court and putting unflinching reliance on the video coverage”.