Key reforms not adopted

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in its Special General Meeting on Wednesday adopted most of the Lodha panel recommendations barring the five areas of contention, which include the age and tenure cap.

Stating how Supreme Court in its order of July 24 had directed BCCI to implement the Lodha recommendations “as far as practical”, the BCCI general body identified the areas which would be submitted to the court for “debate” in the future in the apex body.

The other reforms which were not implemented were one state one vote, the size of the national selection panel, the size of the apex council and the age, tenure and cooling off period.  The Supreme Court had barred N Srinivasan and Niranjan Shah from attending the SGM as they were disqualified on the grounds of age cap.

“Another issue was disqualifications based on government servants and ministers because if the Railways has to be represented in the Board, it cannot be anyone other than government servant or the minister. It is the part of the same resolution,” said BCCI acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary.

When reminded about the stand of Supreme Court on the age and tenure issue, Choudhary said: “I have read out the resolution which has been adopted unanimously and it will go in the form of a submission before the honourable court and honourable court will deal with it.”

Elaborating on areas of difficulties, Choudhary said: “The point on the areas of impracticality include matters pertaining to membership or one state one vote and the retention of full membership structure of the board as it obtains now. Also the difficulties which would arise from the reduction of Railways, or the services, or the universities as associate members.
“The second point is the distributions of functions, powers, duties and obligations set out for office bearers, functionaries committees etc, for the appointed executives.”

Choudhary said the house felt that the apex council should be expanded keeping in view the “size and diversity of the country.”

“Apart from the five office bearers, office bearers have been increased by one in the proposed council, because there is one vice-president who has also been accorded the status of office bearer. So apart from the five, the entire house is to be represented by the just one more member that house thought was an area of difficulty.”

Choudhary revealed that issue of conflict of interest also came for discussion. “But there was a minor difficulty with that. That is some provisions which were read out by several members where definitions of say “friends” or “associates” is not clear. So what the house wants is that these rectifications can be made.”