Supreme Court rejects plea to restore Srinivasan as BCCI chief

The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to hear a plea by N Srinivasan, seeking permission to be reinstated as BCCI president.

The apex court had on March 28 relieved Srinivasan from the board and appointed former Indian test captain Sunil Gavaskar for managing the affairs of the IPL 7 and had asked the senior-most vice president Shivlal Yadav to take charge as president of the BCCI for other purposes like conducting one-day and test matches.

In a fresh bid, Srinivasan urged the court to restore his power and allow him to take care of all cricketing activities other than the IPL by modifying the previous order.

A bench of Justices B S Chauhan and A K Sikri, however, told senior advocate Nagendra Rai, appearing for Srinivasan that the order removing him was not passed ex-parte (without hearing) and that the court could not modify an order delivered by the coordinate bench.

The court also said, “Those were not an ex-parte orders and they were passed in your presence. We are not here to modify the orders passed by another bench.”

Adding to the woes of the ousted BCCI president, the court had on May 16 given a fresh mandate to the Justice Mudgal Committee to investigate allegavtions of corruption against him and 12 others during the probe of betting and spot fixing in the IPL 6.

The court-appointed panel headed by former Punjab and Haryana High Court chief justice Mukul Mudgal and comprising senior advocates L N Rao and Nilay Dutta had submitted a sealed cover report to the apex court, containing “unverified allegations” on the basis of statements of cricketers, board officials, police officers and journalists.

The panel had indicted his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan in its earlier report which had come following the court’s direction on October 8 last to probe betting and spot fixing charges during the IPL-6.