Will Supreme Court finally streamline BCCI administration?

Aditya Verma

Today's Supreme Court hearing concerning BCCI matters is perhaps the most anticipated one for the country's cricketing fraternity. With the hearing getting postponed on a couple of occasions, the last time the apex court heard BCCI matters was on August 9, 2018 when then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra modified the July 18, 2016 judgment.

There are four major issues that the bench of Justices SA Bobde and Abhay Sapre would have to deal with today. Several state associations have filed interlocutory applications before the Supreme Court. The non-recognised Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB) secretary Aditya Verma, who is also the petitioner, has appealed to the court to take cognizance of a 'divided' Committee of Administrators (CoA) and wants it back to four members. He has also highlighted unilateral decision-making by CoA chairman Vinod Rai. The CoA will also press for appointment of an 'ad-hoc' Ombudsman to look into issues related to suspended India cricketers Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul.

All this might be a likely attempt to exhaust the Supreme Court's time in taking up the crushing 10th status report of the CoA where none of the 28 state associations of the BCCI have fully complied with the Supreme Court's judgment as far as recommendations of the Justice Lodha Committee report are concerned. The deadline to comply with the SC judgment was September 20 last year.

The CoA has recommended that the seven totally non-compliant state associations be debarred from voting at the BCCI General Body meeting if they fail to fully comply with the judgment in a week's time. Also, the state units, categorised into partially (category B) and substantially compliant (category C), should be given two weeks time to comply or risk losing their voting rights and membership. The CoA has also urged the SC to provide timelines so that the BCCI elections can be conducted in 90 days.

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