Raj Singh DCB clears air on TV broadcast of meeting

Feb 16, 2011 Sports

Feels Bissoondyal Singh showing contempt for Court order

By Sean Devers
The Raj Singh faction of the Demerara Cricket Board (DCB) feels that leader of the other DCB faction Bissoondyal Singh is showing contempt for the Court order served on him and his executives by continuing to portray himself as the DCB President.

Bissoon Singh

Rohan Sarjoo

The Bissoondyal Singh side will return to Court on February 28 when they will argue why the injunction against them should be quashed but until then Bissoondyal Singh and 11 others have been restrained by the Court from acting, operating, performing, functioning and or discharging in any manner whatsoever any of the functions, duties, and or obligations of or belonging to the Demerara Cricket Board and also from holding themselves out whether individually as Office Bearers or jointly as the Executive Committee of the said Demerara Cricket Board.
According to the Raj Singh faction, Bissoondyal Singh still continues to issue press releases and either calls himself the President of the DCB or is referred to as such by sections of the media in clear violation of the judicial system.
“Mr. Singh could be cited for contempt of court and should have been appropriately warned by his attorneys. In his release he claims to have respect for the rule of law but proceeds to disregard and flout an Order from the court,” the Raj Singh faction stated yesterday.
Bissoondyal Singh in a media release asked the public to disregard the tape of the DCB Special Executive Committee Meeting that was aired on Channel 6 claiming that the tape was edited and doctored and Public Relation Officer of the Raj Singh faction, Rohan Sarjoo responded on this matter yesterday.
“Of course the tape has been edited as that Meeting lasted close to 3 hours and was edited to just over an hour. Regarding his claim that the tape was doctored, we challenge Mr. Bissoondyal Singh to say which section of that tape was doctored as only the pertinent sections of the meeting were included in the edited version.”
Sarjoo presented a synopsis of what he said were the salient points discussed and decided upon at the meeting:
1: The meeting was convened by the President, Bissoondyal Singh, at 5.06pm with all 11 of the Executives present. Messrs. Raymond Barton and Robert Adonis also attended whilst Mr. Nazimul Drepaul initially sat outside of the room.
2: The Secretary sought clarification for the presence of these 2 non-Executive members (Barton & Adonis) with the President who insisted that they were Executives. The Secretary suggested that these 2 persons could be found in contempt of Court as the Judge had ordered an Executive Committee meeting and they were not Executives.
After about 30 minutes of arguing and irrelevant quotes from the constitution by the President, a compromise was suggested by the Secretary to seat both Adonis and Drepaul and this was readily agreed to. Mr Barton is not an Executive Committee member of the DCB nor was he ever invited to attend one of the DCB’s meetings. To his credit, Mr. Barton left the meeting as soon as the objection was raised about his presence.
3: The President tried to exclude Mr. Rohan Sarjoo from the meeting which was strongly objected to by the majority of Executives present. Mr Bissoondyal Singh claimed that the EBDCA held elections recently and the DCB was not informed and wanted to exclude Mr Sarjoo for this reason. The Secretary advised the President that the co-option Clause of the constitution that provided for Roger Harper (GCA President) and Sarjoo (EBDCA President) was not an annually renewable one and in addition, he was in receipt of correspondence from the EBDCA in this regard. He informed that there was an article in the daily newspaper regarding the elections on the East Bank of Demerara.
4: The Minutes of the May 2010 meeting was circulated, read and duly adopted after 1 disputable correction made by the President.
5: An attempt was made by four Police Officers to arrest Sarjoo but the officers eventually waited until the end of the meeting. It was felt by some that Sarjoo’s arrest was planned to have the votes tied so that the President could use his casting vote in his favour. The Police officers firstly asked for Mr. Bissoondyal Singh after which Sarjoo was summoned to speak with them.
6: The Management letter was read by the Secretary after the Treasurer claimed that he was not in receipt of this document. Several queries were raised regarding the single check drawn for $777,220 as no breakdown was provided by the Treasurer and again he did not have in his possession the spreadsheet that normally accompanies his financial statement. The Treasurer promised to circulate this spreadsheet to all Executives.
7: The Secretary advised that he had received a resolution signed by 7 of the 13 Execs present and read the full text of this resolution. There were several quotes from the constitution and agreement was tabled on the date, time, venue and Returning Officer for the AGM. The delegates’ allocation was also addressed in this resolution.
8: During the discussions on this resolution, another attempt was made by the President to exclude the Secretary (Raj Singh) and the PRO (Rovin Stanley) claiming they did not reside in Guyana. This was swiftly put to rest by the Secretary as there was no residency requirement in the constitution of the DCB.
9: This signed resolution by 7 of the 13 members present was put to the floor on a motion moved by Anand Sanasie and seconded by L. Digamber. Seven persons voted in favour by a show of hands and 6 persons abstained.
10: There being no other business, a motion to close the meeting was moved by the Secretary at 7.40pm and seconded by Sanasie with the same 7 persons supporting the motion with 6 abstentions.
Sarjoo said several attempts have been made to misinform and mislead the public and says the airing of this tape was done to clear up these misconceptions.
“Mr. Bissoondyal Singh has steered clear away from the fact that a resolution was read, put to the floor and adopted at this meeting and has even sought to mislead the courts in another matter filed by him to stop an Executive Committee meeting which was summoned to ratify the Minutes of the Special executive Committee meeting,” continued Sarjoo who said that the raw footage of both meetings is available.
‘‘It seems that the former President is receiving a lot of negative comments from the public regarding the tape or he cannot believe his behaviour when he looks at what actually transpired at that meeting. He may have forgotten that the meeting was being taped,” Sarjoo concluded.
The Raj Singh faction can run Demerara’s cricket until the next Court hearing on February 28 and has fixed the DCB Three-Day first Division final between GCC and New Line Cavaliers for Bourda from this Friday, Saturday and Sunday.