The Delhi High Court has set aside a trial court order restraining six office bearers of Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) from discharging their functions saying it was not sustainable in the eyes of law.
The relief came for DDCA joint secretaries Ravi Jain, Ravinder Manchanda, Subhash Sharma, Vivek Gupta and also members of Executive Committee Ashok Sharma and S K Chaudhary, who had challenged the trial court's March 13 order.
Justice V K Shali directed the trial court to decide the case on merits 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 two 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 their contest to the post of Joint Secretary (Accounts) and who had alleged that the elections were not held in a free and fair manner.
The two unsuccessful candidates, Rajneesh Aggarwal and Vinod Garg, had challenged the elections to six of the 16 DDCA posts which were up for grabs.
The trial court had 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 was having with him.
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".
