The only event of note, ironically, was a swap between former joint secretary (sports) Sunil Khanna and joint secretary (club ) SS Sareen.

Members thronged the Kotla from the morning to submit their proxies, but there was no anticipation, no suspense in the air. Everyone knew what was going to happen. And, even before the results had been officially declared, a list of elected members had started floating around the premises.

As always in the DDCA, it was a game of proxies that decided the outcome and S P Bansal, former international umpire and an employee of Indian Airlines, retained the general secretary’s post with the most ballots — 3,501. Among the 12 executive committee members selected, it was Bansal’s supporters who had the most proxies in their pocket. Ganga Prasad Gupta got 3,499 proxies while Ravi Jain and Sunil Kumar Jain pocketed 3,498 each.

The new members in the executive committee were Harsh Kumar Sharma, Salil Seth and Ajay Sharma. Garlands were exchanged after Justice VS Aggarwal handed over the result to president Arun Jaitley, who defeated his only competitor Neeraj Gautam by a staggering 3,349 proxies.

Former Indian Test cricketer Chetan Chauhan, CK Khanna and Suresh Chopra were re-elected as vice-presidents while Sunil Dev retained his post of sports secretary.

Now that the election deadlock has finally been broken, the question on everybody’s lips was whether there they will start happening on a two-year basis or will it be the same old story in DDCA. Anyway, if the results this time are taken into account, it hardly seems to matter.

Office-bearers: Arun Jaitely (president), Chetan Chauhan (vice-president), CK Khanna (vice-president), Suresh Kumar Chopra (vice-president), SP Bansal (general secretary), Sunil Dev (sports secretary), Anil Khanna (club secretary), RB Gupta (treasurer), SS Sareen (jt secretary, sports), Sunil Khanna (joint secretary, club), NK Batra (jt secretary, finance), Anil Jain (joint secretary, company affairs);