Unopposed again! How Arun Dhumal is set to retain IPL chairmanship as BCCI notifies governing council elections

Unopposed again! How Arun Dhumal is set to retain IPL chairmanship as BCCI notifies governing council elections originally appeared on Cricket News. Add Cricket News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• BCCI has started the election process for two IPL Governing Council seats ahead of the September 18 AGM, with voting decided by the general body.
• Arun Singh Dhumal and Khairul Jamal Majumdar, the current elected members, are widely tipped to be returned unopposed for another one-year term.
• Nominations, objections and the final electoral roll will all be sorted between August 25 and September 12, with polling only if a contest actually emerges.

Arun Dhumal set to retain IPL Governing Council chair as BCCI kicks off election process for AGM

Arun Singh Dhumal looks all set to keep his seat as IPL chairman, with the BCCI now setting the wheels in motion for elections to two Governing Council posts before its Annual General Meeting on September 18.

Dhumal, who comes in from Himachal Pradesh, currently shares the elected slots on the council with Mizoram's Khairul Jamal Majumdar, and neither man is expected to face any real opposition when the votes are eventually counted, if they're counted at all.

BCCI Electoral Officer AK Joti has put out the formal notification under Rule 28 of the board's constitution, kicking off a process that might feel a bit repetitive given both men already hold these posts.

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Why is Arun Dhumal seeking re-election as IPL Chairman?

The rules cap an elected Governing Council member's term at just one year. So Dhumal and Majumdar have to go back through the whole exercise even though nobody's really expecting a shake-up.

The roll-out of this process actually started on August 25, when BCCI's Full Members were asked to put forward their nominees for the AGM. State units have been given until August 31 to get those nominations in.

Whatever objections come in after that will be looked into before the final electoral roll gets published on September 8. From there, candidates for the two council seats need to file their papers on either September 9 or 10, and once scrutiny is done, the final candidate list drops on September 12. Should it actually come to a vote, that'll happen at the AGM itself on September 18.

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Why is Arun Dhumal tipped for unopposed return to IPL Chairmanship?

According to Cricbuzz, Dhumal and Majumdar are both strongly favoured to sail through unopposed, meaning Dhumal stays put at the top of the IPL's decision-making body for another year.

The council itself runs seven members deep, four from the BCCI general body (the two elected seats plus secretary Devajit Saikia and treasurer Raghuram Bhat), and three more filling out the rest: the BCCI's chief executive, someone from the Indian Cricketers' Association, and a nominee sent by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

For now, all eyes are on August 31, when state associations must lock in their AGM nominations, which will set the stage for a fortnight of procedural steps that most in Indian cricket circles expect to end exactly where it started, with Dhumal still in charge.

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