BCCI Clean Bowled By The Lodha Panel
Implications of the sacking of Thakur and Shirke from India’s cricketing body.
The world’s richest cricketing body, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, is set for a revamp. The two most powerful men on the board – President Anurag Thakur and Secretary Ajay Shirke – were on Monday removed from their posts by the Supreme Court after they failed to comply with its order on implementing administrative reforms recommended by the Justice RM Lodha Committee. The apex court also asked all office bearers and state cricket associations to furnish undertakings stating that they will implement all recommendations made by the Lodha panel on administrative and structural reform.
According to the key recommendation of the panel, no one over the age of 70 , ministers, government servants and people holding a post at a state cricket association are eligible to hold any post at the BCCI .
The decision of the three-judge bench headed by the outgoing Chief Justice of India TS Thakur is unlikely to change with little or no legal re-course available to the BCCI. Suhrith Parthasarathy, who is a lawyer at the Madras High Court told BloombergQuint that there was always a theoretical possibility that the BCCI or the ousted executives could file a review petition, but the chances of that happening are slim. He also added that review petitions are usually allowed only on narrow grounds, and that any new bench constituted by the incoming Chief Justice of India JS Khehar is unlikely to modify the order.
That any legal challenge was unlikely was also reflected in a statement made by Anurag Thakur on his Twitter account. If the Supreme Court felt that the BCCI could be better run by retired judges, he wished them all the best, Thakur said, adding that he was sure the BCCI would do well under their guidance and that he respected the decision of the court.
India is bang in the middle of a long home season, currently hosting England while the Australian team is slated to arrive next month. The Indian Premiere League is scheduled to start from April.
The Supreme Court has directed senior advocates Gopal Subramanium and Fali Nariman to suggest names of persons to form a new panel of administrators to oversee the functioning of the BCCI. The court will take a decision on the matter at its next hearing on January 19.
In the interim, the senior-most vice president of the cricketing body will act as president, and the joint secretary will fulfill the role of the secretary. The successful conduct of domestic and international fixtures in this transition period would be a key challenge for the new administration, senior sports columnist, commentator and analyst Ayaz Memon said. Cricket was too big and too popular a sport to suffer any adverse long-term ramifications of the January 2 order, he added.
The order has been hailed as a landmark day for Indian sports administration, and Aditya Verma, a petitioner in the case against the BCCI and the secretary of the un-recognized Cricket Association of Bihar, said Thakur and Shirke’s removal was a lesson for arrogant officials with links to the ruling party , who had believed that they were immune from the law.
Transparency and institutional integrity would be positively impacted now as those with conflicts of interest are now excluded from holding office, he added.
The BCCI had been dragging its feet to implement some of the key recommendations of the Lodha panel, like one-state one-vote, a maximum age limit of 70 years and a cooling-off period of three years. However, they did accept a few significant recommendations, including induction of the representative of the Comptroller and Auditor General as a member of the Apex Council as well as the IPL Governing Council, and the formation of the Apex Council with certain modifications.
Reacting to an almost defiant BCCI, the Supreme Court had asked banks to stop the board's disbursements, effectively ensuring the decisions taken at the cricket body’s special general meeting will not be executed. This led to a frenzy of accusations and clarifications, with the BCCI threatening to cancel the Test series against New Zealand and England.
On November 21, the Lodha Committee recommended the sacking of all office-bearers of the BCCI, after their "continued non-compliance" with the Supreme Court-appointed panel. It had sought the appointment of GK Pillai, former Union home secretary as the observer of the BCCI to supervise its administration.
The BCCI's TV rights tender allotment process also got delayed, which led to them showing signs of real worry. They asked their State Associations to have a 'Plan B' ready ahead of the court's final hearing.
The decision kept getting deferred all through December for various reasons. But on January 2, the Supreme Court reached a decision that has the potential to have far-reaching effects on the sport in India.