Supreme Court bars ministers, bureaucrats from BCCI

Court accepted the recommendations to have CAG nominee in BCCI and that office bearers in BCCI should not be beyond the age of 70 years.

The panel had said that people of the country have a right to know the details about the BCCI’s functions and activities and had recommended that legislature must seriously consider bringing the cricket body within the purview of the RTI Act.

A bench of Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justice FMI Kalifulla said the committee’s recommendation for financial support to the Players’ Association can not be rejected as the extent of such support is left to BCCI to be decided on a “fair and objective view” of its financial resources and commitments.

Uncannily reading the minds of those opposing the Lodha panel recommendations submitted on December 18, 2015, for the court to stamp its authority, the Supreme Court said the sense of justice and fairness personified by Justice Lodha’s work seemed to have “made little or no difference” to those resisting the committee’s conclusions and suggestions.

The SC accepts the massive Lodha commission recommendations.

The court has accepted this recommendation and said that if states have more than one member, such members would be relegated to the status of associate members. “Once the BCCI is reformed it will go down the line and all cricket associations will have to reform themselves if they want to associate with it. The committee constituted in the wake of match-fixing and spot-fixing allegations was a serious exercise and not a futile exercise”, the two-judge bench said.

The apex court’s verdict could affect some of the most high profile BCCI officials including current president Anurag Thakur, who also heads the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association (HPCA).

“That is what we fear will happen”, said a senior member of the Mumbai Cricket Association.

The judgement has also put a spanner in his desire to continue as the BCCI chief beyond 2017 as by that time he would have served as BCCI office bearer (he has been joint secretary and secretary before he took over as president) for three years continuously. “We do not think that the game flourishes in this country because any minister or civil servant holds office in the state associations or the BCCI”. “The transition from the old to the new system recommended by the Committee shall have to be under the watchful supervision of this Court”.

The vote politics will also be affected by the reduction of number of vice-presidents from five to just one. Implementation has to be done by BCCI.

The most important set of recommendations announced by the Lodha Committee in January this year were accordingly aimed at transforming the BCCI’s power structure.