BCCI elections on October 22, announces CoA

After being supervised for nearly two and a half years by the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will have an elected body in place in five months to the date.

In a significant decision on Tuesday, the CoA, following its meeting in New Delhi, announced that the BCCI elections would be held on October 22 after the polls to install elected members in the state associations are completed on September 14.

The CoA, which was appointed on January 17, 2017 to oversee the implementation of the Lodha Committee's recommendations within six months, finally decided to hold the elections with 30 states being declared compliant and the rest in the process of amending their constitution in keeping with the Lodha reforms.

The Supreme Court had assigned amicus curiae P S Narasimha in March to mediate with various state associations which had filed 80 interim appeals.

Asked about elections finally taking place in the BCCI, which has suffered from administrative crisis for more than two years, Rai said he was a happy man.

"When I was appointed by the Honourable Supreme Court, I had said that my role will be of a night watchman and this night watchman has stayed for very long," Rai said in a lighter vein.

"We (CoA) are happy because our job was very specific. It was mandated to make them (the state associations) accept the constitution (as per Lodha recommendations). They (associations) had difficulties which was mediated between us, amicus and the court. We are happy to hand it over to them.

"We sincerely believed a democratically run elected body should run cricket in the country," added the former CAG.