Campaigning for delayed DBA elections reaches zenith

Nagpur: With just four days left for the polls, the campaigning for inordinately delayed District Bar Association (DBA) elections has reached its zenith.
The contestants have intensified campaigning not only on courts, but also among voters homes and in other common places. This is perhaps the most keenly contested and most expensive elections in over 100 years of DBA’s history where nearly 50 candidates are fighting for just nine seats of executive committee members.

On Monday, the DBA poll panel led by veteran lawyer KB Ambilwade released the room numbers on the premises of district and sessions court, where voting would take place on Friday from 10am to 5.30pm.

This time, about 3,905 have registered for the process out of over 7,000 lawyers practicing in the court. All of them were divided into three different rooms according to their serial numbers. The first voter to 2,482 would be accommodated in room numbers 214 and 224, while the rest would be diverted to the canteen on the ground floor.

According to lawyers, the polls have become interesting following direct involvement of major political parties who are fielding their candidates. Prominent among them is BJP which fielded its candidates through its legal cell and who are tipped as favourites. Even Adhivakta Parishad has entered the fray.

There is a three-way fight for top post of president and all of them are bigwigs in the legal arena. It includes Uday Dable, Kamal Satuja and Manoj Sable.

While Dable is BJP legal cell’s state general secretary and is also a close aide of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, Sable is former DBA secretary and Satuja is ex-vice president. For the secretary’s post, there’s a tough fight between Ranjan Deshpande, Vivek Kolte, Nitin Deshmukh, Mangesh Moon, and SD Kalyani.

The much-awaited polls have already courted controversies with its former body delaying them for nearly two years on the pretext of completing its L-shaped building. Recently, its voting list came under the scanner for several blunders in names and genders of the candidates and dropping of many prominent names.

Unlike High Court Bar Association (HCBA), even a freshly enrolled DBA member can cast his/her vote, thus providing every chance of manipulations in the polling process. The group enrolling more number of voters would stand a chance to win the seat, the lawyers said.