Mumbai T20: BCCI asks administrators to explain demand for free passes

The friction between the BCCI top brass and Committee of Administrators (CoA) again came to the forefront when the distribution of complimentary passes for the third India-Sri Lanka T20 led to a tussle.

As per the BCCI rulebook, the president is entitled to 50 complimentary passes, including hospitality tickets, the secretary has 75 and the treasurer gets seven passes for matches.

What has come under scanner is CoA’s letter “requesting” acting president CK Khanna and acting secretary Amitabh Chaudhary to part with 25 complimentary passes each for the stakeholders during every international match, starting with the December 24 India-Sri Lanka tie.

All the stakeholders, from various sponsors to official broadcasters, have been allocated their share of complimentary passes. However, a section of the BCCI is asking “who are these unnamed stakeholders” for whom passes are being sought by the CoA.

These BCCI officials, who are now currently running the show, were aggrieved that acting president Khanna had collected his 50 passes for the Mumbai T20 game without parting with his share of 25 passes that he was ordered to give back for the “unnamed stakeholders”.

Once he refused, one among the three most influential officials in the BCCI at the moment, threatened to “block those tickets” in possession of Khanna and even asked the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) to do so.

The MCA informed that it can’t block premium tickets and reprint them at such a short notice.

“If the rulebook is strictly followed, Khanna can’t be faulted for collecting his entire share of passes. The CoA letter specifically says ‘request’ and any office-bearer is well within his rights to decline such a request,” said a senior official.

“If every stakeholders’ share is specified then why are the officebearers being told to part with their share of passes? All we want to know is that who are these stakeholders,” asked the official.

Calls and text messages to CoA member Diana Edulji went unanswered.

NEW DELHI: