Cricket: Are Committees of Administrators the way forward?

Appointment of Committee of Administrators by courts to run the errant sports bodies is becoming more of a norm

In what was the biggest clean-up operation in a sports body in India, the Supreme Court nominated a four-member Committee of Administrators (CoA) on January 30, 2017 to run the day-to-day operations of the Board of Control for Cricket in India till an elected body was in place. The CoA was given six months to implement the SC-appointed Lodha Committee recommendations, aimed at bringing in administrative reforms within the BCCI.

Vinod Rai, the former Comptroller and Auditor General of India, was the chief, while historian Ramachandra Guha, banker Vikram Limaye and former India Women captain Diana Edulji were the other members. The CoA was tasked with conducting elections according to the new constitution at the earliest. However, it took the CoA, which had been reduced to two members by the time it demitted office, more than two and a half years to conduct the Board’s elections.

Did the CoA serve the purpose it was appointed for even after an extended stay? Is the BCCI, easily the best-run sports body in the country despite its inherent issues, in a better position than it was after what it went through during the CoA spell? The jury is still out on these questions. But it begs the larger question -- is court action the only solution to put erring sports federations in their place?

Since February this year, the SC and the Delhi High Court, in separate orders, have brought as many as three sports associations – the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI), the All India Football Federation (AIFF) and Hockey India (HI) -- under the purview of CoAs in a bid to make these organisations fall in line with the Union Government’s 2011 Sports Code and end their “dictatorial” ways of running the show.

The problems with these aforementioned three organisations aren’t too different from what the BCCI was accused of -- administrators, who had held on to their positions for decades, had become so influential that it wasn’t just impossible to challenge their unbridled authority but also detrimental to the growth of the sport. But the SC’s intervention in the case of the BCCI, which unlike these federations is an autonomous, self-sufficient body that doesn’t rely on the government for grants, seems to have set a precedent. Whether it is for better or worse, only time will tell.

If former Bihar unit chief Aditya Verma’s plea against then BCCI president N Srinivasan led to the installation of the CoA to run cricket affairs, the alleged witch-hunt against Khel Ratna awardee Manika Batra, who filed a petition against the TTFI, led to the dismissal of the establishment by the Delhi HC, which termed the federation’s running as a “sorry state of affairs.”

Late last month, the AIFF was freed of Praful Patel’s clutches after he had continued in office beyond the permissible tenure. Patel’s third term ended in December 2020 but he clung to an SC case, pending since 2017, to extend his executive committee’s term. He refused to hold elections till the issue of a new constitution was settled by the top court.

Machinations

Close on the heels of the SC bringing down Patel’s empire, the Delhi HC saw through Narendra Batra’s machinations to perpetually stay at the helm of Hockey India affairs and unseated one of the most influential names in Indian sports.

In a direction by the same court on Friday with potentially far-reaching ramifications, the Centre was told not to provide money or any other assistance to national sports federations which are not in compliance with the Sports Code.

“It is unsporting. (It is) not sporting at all not to comply with the rules. There are too many red cards coming up,” said the bench, comprising Justices Najmi Waziri and Vikas Mahajan.

The court also gave a month’s time to ensure compliance, failing which such NSFs shall be put on notice of suspension.

The heat is clearly on the errant NSFs, but the courts must also ensure that the CoAs are held accountable, especially if they are being paid for the job they have been entrusted with. What happened with the CoA that was named to fix the BCCI is all too obvious. The Rai-led panel overstayed its welcome by close to two years, and for all its extended stint at the helm, little seems to have changed with the BCCI.

Board president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah, not unlike AIFF’s Patel, have clung on to their posts despite their tenures ending in July 2020 through a pending application in the SC which is yet to dispose of the matter one way or the other. The status quo has meant Ganguly and Shah have been able to make a mockery of the BCCI constitution that ironically went through several amendments recommended by the SC-monitored Lodha panel.

Besides fixing fixed terms for office-bearers, one of the underlying objectives of the reforms was to get rid of rampant nepotism and conflict of interest in the richest cricket body. While the amendments to the constitution have done little to eradicate nepotism, conflict of interest rules are so illogical that they have discouraged efficient and eminent people from taking up cricket-related jobs with the BCCI. And the game is poorer for that.

Also, besides installing an elected body of eligible candidates, the CoA’s job is to ensure that game-related matters like team selections and appointing coaches are best left to domain experts. How a decathlete, notwithstanding his qualifications, can be the chairperson of the CoA-appointed selection committee of the TTFI when there are accomplished TT players in the five-member panel is beyond one’s comprehension.

CoAs not only need to do the right things, they should also be seen to be doing so. After all, perception is paramount. In the absence of a political will to set the house in order, judicial intervention may seem the only alternative, but courts should also ensure that CoAs themselves don’t exacerbate the problems they were appointed to solve in the first place. As happened in the case of the BCCI.