Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI)
The hearing of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) reform case before Justice Dipak Misra-led bench this afternoon in Supreme Court room number 2, as expected, did not lead to any tangible outcome.
shamnad (@shamnad) tweeted: "What a story! One of the most creative counsels around. And one of the few with balls! Pun very much intended, given that it's cricket!"
Gopal Sankaranarayanan: The lawyer on a mission to weed out politics from cricket
New Delhi: Three years after the Supreme Court flagged off an overhaul of India’s apex cricket body, it’s the home stretch.
On 22 January 2014, former chief justice T.S. Thakur named justices R.M. Lodha, Ashok Bhan and R.V. Raveendran to clean up cricket administration in India. The panel recommended a 16-step process which the cricket body duly defied, prompting the SC to replace its office-bearers.
The three judges who lived in Delhi, Chandigarh and Bengaluru were not known to be cricket aficionados—in sharp contrast to Gopal Sankaranarayanan, the 40-year-old Supreme Court advocate and the panel’s secretary assigned to assist the judges.
So, after some time out, ex-Supreme Court judge Justice Markandey Katju (Retd.) is in the news again, seemingly putting a spanner in a variety of works.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Tuesday appointed former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju as the head of a legal panel to guide the board in understanding the recommendations of the Justice RM Lodha Committee which have been approved by the apex court.
Justice RM Lodha Committee appointed by the Supreme Court of India to look into the functionality of Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) submitted it’s report today recommending legalisation of betting, among other reforms according to The Hindu.
The committee recommended multiple reforms in order to regularize the sport in India. Lodha was quoted as commenting in a press conference, “our year-long effort was to remove the ailing parts, revitalise the body so that it could run a marathon for the betterment of the game. Our job was to restore the pristine glory of the game of which 1.28 billion of the country is passionate for.”
Observing that betting is a multi million dollar industry all over the world, the committee recommended the government to enact laws to regularise it, including disallowing players, team and match officials and cricket administrators to participate in betting. It also asked the government to restrict the betting to licensed betting houses and take steps to ensure that players or officials do not participate in the same.
The committee also rooted for a nine-member apex council to replace the existing 14 member BCCI working committee and asked that five of the nine office-bearers should not be either government servant or minister and no office bearer to hold position for two consecutive years.
To ensure equitable voting pattern, the committee suggested ‘one state one vote scheme’ wherein cricket associations representing states would have one vote each.
The committee also recommended position of CEO to be introduced under which the person would take responsibility of day to day non-cricket working of the BCCI
The committee floated the idea of ‘cricket player’s association’ to be funded and managed by the BCCI under which all agents shall be registered.
Apart from these, the recommendations included introduction of ‘ethics officer’ who would be a retired high court judge, an ‘ombudsman’ who would be a retired Supreme Court judge as well as an ‘electoral officer’ to be nominated two weeks prior to elections.
In another report, the committee gave a clean chit to former IPL COO Sundar Raman on allegations of his involvement in the 2013 IPL betting and said that his omission to inform the officials of betting activities didn’t seem to be motivated with any personal interest, the news reported.
Next hearing on 19 July in interim stay of fine over BCCI conduct.