It was at the turn of the millennium when Suresh Kalmadi ousted incumbent Bob Hassan of Indonesia with a 19-15 margin at his home turf in Jakarta to be chosen the fifth president of the Asian Athletics Association.
Kalmadi’s ever-growing dominance as a sports administrator in Asia saw him holding the post for 13 years. But the scam-tainted Pune MP was given a harsh lesson on Monday when he lost the election for a fourth successive term to Qatar’s influential rival Dahlan Jumaan Al-Hamad at his own turf in Pune.
In a tight contest, Al-Hamad, who is one of three vice-presidents of the International Amateur Athletics Federation, edged out Kalmadi 20-18, when 45 member countries voted at the 20th Congress here on Monday, ahead of the Asian Athletics Championships.
Undeterred by criticism over serious accusations of corruption in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, Kalmadi was confident of pulling off a heist with votes from South Asia, but for once, his calculations were proved wrong. Though he managed 18 votes, the deciding factor proved to be the seven which were disqualified.
To counter Al-Hamad’s challenge, who is here with an army of support staff, the Kalmadi camp had been working overnight and were involved in some intense lobbying but the backroom talks failed when the parent body IAAF declared seven votes null and void.
The defeat brings Kalmadi’s stint as a sports administrator to an end. Before being jailed for 10 months for his alleged role in the CWG scandal, Kalmadi had stepped down from the post of the Indian Olympic Association president.
Though he will continue to be an IAAF council member till 2015, Kalmadi will not have any voting rights. He will be able to attend future Congress of the AAA thanks to the honorary presidential posts handed to all former presidents but won’t have a major role to play.
Announcement goof-up or planned move?
It was the first time in the history of the AAA that all 45 members voted in the presidential elections. The close result could have gone either way if the seven votes had not been disqualified. While the officials were tightlipped on the countries whose votes were not counted, a top official revealed that it was a plain goof up on the part of the announcer who made things complicated.
“Every voted had to either “tick” or “cross” a candidate of their choice but they ended up doing both. They put both the check marks suggesting tick for their choice of the candidate and a cross against the candidate they did not support.”
There were talks of the Kalmadi camp lodging a former appeal against the disqualified votes saying some officials deliberately voted for both but Lalit Bhanot, the suspended AFI secretary and a close aide of Kalmadi, accepted the verdict. “It was a fair election. The invalid votes could have gone either way.”