Pawar’s legal eagles in tough away match

They were Sharad Pawar’s legal team, and they’d been working on this project — Oust Mahendra — for months. Actually, they came with Lalit Modi, the Rajasthan Cricket Association chief who has taken on the role of Pawar’s campaign manager.

Pawar may have the political savvy, he may even have the Congress’s backing but the likes of Mehmood Abdi, Milind Gokhale and Pradeep Sancheti give him an edge over the more streetsmart Dalmiya-Mahendra combine.

After Pawar’s 2004 loss on a legality, Modi was asked to ensure that rivals don’t fox them with another legal googly. ‘‘With several court cases and many of them interlinked, this was a factor that we had to concentrate on. We have been planning everything for several months,’’ he said.

So the team swung into action. Modi’s lawyers — not just the 14 here — were stationed in J&K, Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur and Kolkata. Abdi, who is the Legal Head at Modi Chemicals, talks about his 15-days-a-month schedule over the past year. ‘‘The guys at the airlines asked me to apply for a season pass,’’ he jokes.

When the matters are so pressing, he is among the first who gets a call from Modi. ‘‘After court appointed the observer I was called in. I flew in late at night and the next morning we modified the order and got two additional observers,’’ he says.

The backroom boys got along best with the hotel’s Business Centre staff, where they were posted most of the time. Faxes sent, received, photocopies to be rushed in during the meeting, court order distributed to the media or just going in a huddle when things seem to take a different turn.

They seem unperturbed by the adjournment of the AGM as they insist that their ‘boss’ was the only men who didn’t support the move. The only thing they will fight shy of, Abdi apart, is quotes. They are more for the backroom.

But in the days to come, they could occupy more of the foreground.