BCCI waits anxiously as apex court may decide on reforms

Board officebearers face ouster as Supreme Court is likely to take up Lodha panel status report

NEW DELHI: The Indian cricket board’s office-bearers will know their fate on Monday when the Supreme Court takes up the Justice RM Lodha Committee’s third status report recommending that the defiant officials should be replaced.

The court’s order barring the BCCI and its state units from utilising funds until they pledge to implement the Lodha panel directives in full have not been heeded to by the majority. Only Hyderabad, Vidarbha and Tripura have agreed to implement.

Despite the Lodha panel recommending that the office-bearers falling foul of its directives — the three-judge panel has asked for one man, one post, one state, one vote and age limit of 70 to be implemented across the board — the BCCI full members in a Special General Meeting on Friday stuck together in their continued opposition to those reform steps.

The Lodha panel has recommended former union home secretary, GK Pillai’s appointment as observer with sweeping powers, which will include overseeing the lucrative media rights contract for the Indian Premier League from 2018.

The board secretary, Ajay Shirke, said on Friday that the body decided to stick to its decision taken in the first SGM on October 1, where the board officials and most of its affiliates said it will not be able to take on board all the administrative reforms as directed by the Lodha panel.

“We will wait for December 5,” was Shirke’s comment after Friday’s SGM, which seemed to suggest that it nursed some hope that the Apex court will not immediately ask its office-bearers to step down.

However, the order to financially squeeze the BCCI and its state units has left some affiliates grumbling that they have been forced to make some arrangement or other to keep cricket going. The court, following a sep- arate petition by the BCCI, had allowed the board to draw money to be spent for the conduct of the home Test series, against New Zealand and now against England.

The BCCI is skating on thin ice. The Supreme Court, while accepting most of the Lodha panel recommendations on July 18, gave four to six months for the board to implement the directives.

It remains to be seen whether the board is given some leeway by the Apex court on that ground as the final deadline will be in mid-January.

GK Pillai though has said he had no issues taking up the responsibility as board observer if the court asks him to.

The court is also likely to take up the affidavit filed by BCCI president, Anurag Thakur, on his purported conversation with the ICC asking the global body to intervene in a bid to avoid the inclusion of a Comptroller and Auditor General’s office representative as a member of the Apex council, as recommended by the Lodha panel.

The BCCI has insisted that they have implemented many of the Lodha panel’s recommendations.