Soon after being ‘removed’ of his responsibilities as city police chief today, Prasun Mukherjee is facing an equal music in his role as the president of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB). The unceremonious exit, a fall out of the raging Todigate controversy, coupled with growing resentment against the incumbent CAB administration, has opened a Pandora’s box for Mukherjee. There’s still no news if Eden Gardens’ lease with the Army, which expired last June, will be renewed in the near future, let alone the stalled infrastructure project. And although his biggest critic and former BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya, chose to keep mum on today’s startling development, his backers naturally stepped on the gas today. Most vociferous was former CAB assistant secretary Biswarup Dey, a key Dalmiya aide and acerbic critic of the Mukherjee-led CAB administration. “Today’s development really comes as a pleasant surprise. He (Mukherjee) should have stepped down much earlier,” Dey told The Indian Express minutes after the decision was announced to “remove” Mukherjee as police chief. “If he has any sense of morality, he will immediately quit from the CAB post. Already, the CAB’s image has been tarnished in the last two weeks. He should remember that the CAB is not outside the society,” Dey asserted. Dey’s verbal attack is, in fact, a reflection of the Maidan pulse, where the Dalmiya-backed opposition to the current CAB dispensation is growing fast. Interestingly, despite the intensifying Dalmiya-backed opposition, Mukherjee has the luxury of continuing as the CAB chief till July-end next year. Explains CAB joint-secretary Samar Paul: “Technically, going by the CAB’s constitution, he (Mukherjee) can continue as CAB president till the next Annual General Meeting, in July-end 2008, that is, if he doesn’t resign from the post.” Equally defensive and supportive of the CAB chief was Maidan kingmaker Biswanath Dutt. “Why should he resign? For him, the CAB job and the police job are completely different. “There’s no reason for him to resign from CAB, technically and logically,” the former Indian cricket board president told this daily. “CAB is a different organisation, where he came in as an elected office-bearer, after all.”
