NEW DELHI: Another hearing, another date! That is what the Board of Control for Cricket in India is seeking from the Supreme Court. And if it does NOT get it, it will likely come as a surprise to the people who matter in the world’s richest and most powerful cricketing body.
The BCCI’s legal team has sought a two-week adjournment in the apex court’s hearing, scheduled for Tuesday, on the continuation of Sourav Ganguly, former Team India captain, and Jay Shah, the son of India’s all-powerful home minister, on the tooth matter of the duo’s continuation as board president and secretary respectively, despite both their tenures having long ended.
In a letter dated February 13 to the registrar of the Supreme Court and accessed by Outlook, the BCCI’s defence team has said that “the counsel appearing on behalf of the BCCI is in difficulty and therefore the appellant is seeking an adjournment for two weeks”.
The BCCI matter is listed for hearing in the court of Justice L. Nageswara Rao and Justice S. Ravindra Bhat on February 16 (Tuesday). As Outlook has pointed out, two hearings on the matter in Justice Rao’s court have been fruitless so far.
The letter from the BCCI counsel has not explained the nature of “difficulty” but insiders told the magazine that this was nothing but a “delaying tactic”.
“This is the only way Ganguly and Shah can continue. They are all taking shelter behind an application that is challenging the verdict of a three-judge bench and questioning the wisdom of more than 20 Supreme Court judges, some of them Chief Justices,” a legal luminary told Outlook.
As per the BCCI constitution and a final ruling handed down by a three-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court in August 2018, both Ganguly and Shah are currently supposed to be in their “cooling off” period.
There are 14 interlocutory applications listed for hearing on February 16 but the most significant one is BCCI’s application (IA No. 49930 of 2020) that is seeking recall of various directions of the Supreme Court and of Justice RM Lodha Committee recommendations, Outlook reports.
Tamil Nadu Cricket Association and Haryana Cricket Association, whose funds have been withheld by the Board, have made similar appeals.
The new board constitution was formulated on the recommendations of the Lodha reforms and signed into law in August 2018 after being approved and registered by the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators, led by Vinod Rai, the former Comptroller and Auditor General of India.
Outlook further reports:
In its application to the Supreme Court, the BCCI has sought six major changes in its constitution. The tenure of its office-bearers is one of them. According to Rule 45 of the BCCI constitution: “Any (such) amendment will not be given effect to without the leave of the Hon’ble Supreme Court”.
However, in October 2019, BCCI elected Ganguly, Shah and Jayesh George as its office bearers despite being aware that all there were just months away from entering a three-year “cooling off” from cricket administration.
That said cooling off period has been given the royal ignore is history now. so too the long rope given by the apex court to the BCCI in this case.
