BCCI officials stubborn, says new report

: The Committee of Administrators has appealed to the Supreme Court to give its stamp of approval to the new constitution of the cricket Board that will permit only those state units conforming to the new rules in its annual general meeting. Eighteen Supreme Court hearings, since the appointment of the administrators, have produced scant results.

Submitting its ninth status report, running into 102 pages ahead of Thursday’s hearing, the Supreme Court-appointed CoA has said the acting office-bearers of BCCI were placing hurdles at every step in the implementation of the Justice RM Lodha committee report.

The CoA has elaborated on its tussle with the BCCI officials, especially acting secretary, Amitabh Choudhary. The status report pleads that the officials’ refusal to sign on the new, enhanced player contracts until last month and going ahead with an SGM on June 22 — the CoA annulled its decisions — were attempts to undermine the apex court’s bid for reform.

NEW DELHI

At present, a number of domestic leagues are staged every year in country. Prominent among them are Karnataka Premier League, Tamil Nadu Premier League , T20 Mumbai League (organised for the first time this year).

Each association is required to take approval from the BCCI prior to staging/hosting tournament every year or as the case may be. Application should be submitted at least 45 days prior to the start of the tournament. A staging

“The office-bearers of BCCI are, in collusion with various other persons who attended the June 22 SGM, clearly attempting to subvert the orders passed by this honourable court by inserting limitations on the powers and duties of CoA. This is being done with a view to hampering the ability of the CoA to effectively supervise the management of the BCCI through the CEO (Rahul Johri),” it said in the status report.

The report, signed by CoA chairman, Vinod Rai, says that the acting BCCI officials were drawing “artificial distinction between management and association is allowed to conduct only one tournament annually. Only those players registered with the staging association and qualify to represent the said staging association in BCCI domestic tournaments are eligible. Players outside territorial jurisdiction of the staging association are not eligible

The franchises must have registered office in the jurisdiction of the staging association. The support staff, match officials

administration” to undermine the court-appointed body’s bid to cleanse the system.

Choudhary has denied this was the case. In an interview to this paper, he said: “The Supreme Court’s order of January 2 and 20, 2017, and on March 24, 2017 reiterated that office-bearers do exist. Had that not been the case, while removing the president and secretary, why did the court go to the extent of directing that the seniormost vice-president will act as president and joint secretary as secretary?

The CoA status report urges the court to finalise the new stat-