Will the BCCI be left rudderless once again?

Board will be without its top three office bearers after July 27

In April, Mahim Verma resigned as vice-president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India to take charge as secretary of the Cricket Association of Uttarakhand. Jay Shah, the board secretary, has reportedly already slipped into the cooling-off period. And president Sourav Ganguly will follow suit unless the Supreme Court steps in before July 27.

If the apex court doesn’t take up the BCCI’s plea and deliver a favourable verdict by waiving the mandatory cooling-off period after six years in administration as laid out in the Board’s constitution, the former India captain will have to demit office before this month is over.

This means the BCCI faces the prospect of being without its top three office-bearers, less than two weeks hence. With joint-secretary Jayesh George due to cool off in August, it will leave treasurer Arun Dhumal as the sole elected office-bearer in the nine-member Apex Council.

The BCCI first filed a plea in December last year, and followed it up with a second appeal in April, requesting the Supreme Court to consider a few modifications to the board’s revised constitution of 2018. Crucial among them is the proposal to not lump terms in state associations and the BCCI together while determining the cooling-off status. Separating those tenures and using six continuous years at either the BCCI level or a state association level as the yardstick will help Ganguly, Shah and George escape the mandatory cooling-off period until 2025.

Though summer vacations are over, only a limited number of courts are functioning through virtual mode due to Covid-19.

While the current BCCI set-up is looking at ways of retaining their positions, Alka Rehani Bharadwaj, the nominated representative of the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) in the Apex Council, is turning on the heat.

Last week, Bharadwaj asked the BCCI to ensure that only “eligible” office-bearers attended the Apex Council meeting on July 17, without mentioning names. In an email to Ganguly and George, Bharadwaj wrote that any office-bearer whose tenure (six unbroken years) was over would need to provide legal backing to justify their participation (in the meeting).

Close on the heels of that missive, the CAG approached the SC on Wednesday, requesting that it be not included in the Apex Council as it had not been able to perform its primary job of providing financial oversight to the BCCI and the state associations.

It said that being the supreme audit institution of India, the CAG’s specialisation was audit.

“... Therefore, the CAG may be considered for intervention in the affairs of BCCI/state cricket associations only for the purpose of audit - either as a routine e.g. annual, biennial etc or as and when directed by this court,” CAG said in its appeal.

To add to these woes, the BCCI accepted the resignation of its CEO Rahul Johri a couple of days ago, creating a paucity of working understanding of the Board if not of administrative capabilities as he had been around for five years and understood the nitty-gritty of the Board’s affairs.

In times of the pandemic with the BCCI looking to save its most lucrative product, the Indian Premier League, it can’t afford to have a headless body. Having suffered significantly during the court-appointed Committee of Administrators reign, it needs to quickly set its house in order. But by virtue of its own omission at the time of the elections in December, it now finds itself at the mercy of the highest court in the land again. Which begs the belated but inevitable question – how did the BCCI allow itself to reach this position?

While Verma’s decision to return to Uttarakhand might not have been foreseen at the time of the AGM last year, the decision-makers were well aware that Ganguly, Shah and George would have to relinquish their positions within two months of each other unless the Supreme Court intervened.

Had they been more prudent and worked on fact rather than suppositions, the BCCI would have spared itself, and all its stake-holders, the embarrassment that is looming large.