#dnaEdit: Fundamental flaw

Beyond facilitating more judicial scrutiny of BCCI functioning, Thursday’s Supreme Court judgment rejecting N Srinivasan’s blatant attempt to continue as BCCI president and an IPL team-owner may not live up to its billing as a “landmark” judgment for other reasons. For long, the BCCI has claimed to be a private body being administered professionally and without the pitfalls of governmental interventions. The BCCI has also claimed credit for the popularity of cricket in the country and the impressive cricketing infrastructure that has been built up since the early Nineties. While these contentions may be correct to an extent, what was worrying was that the BCCI was functioning as an oligarchy and did not feel it necessary to address concerns of transparency and accountability. This was despite the BCCI and its affiliated regional associations selecting teams that represent India at cricket tournaments and the sport even feeding into the sense of nationalistic pride for many among the cricket-watching public. 

The BCCI has steadfastly refused to come under the purview of the Right to Information Act and even rejected the Income Tax department’s contention that most of its activities were commercial in nature. Until 2006, the government had granted BCCI tax exemption on the ground that promoting cricket was a ‘charitable activity’ under Section 2(15) of the Income Tax Act. With this judgment, the Supreme Court has emphatically clarified that the BCCI’s articles and memorandum of association, its rules and regulations, and its actions are liable to face the scrutiny of writ jurisdiction provided by Article 226 of the Constitution of India. The duties ascribed to the three-member committee of retired Supreme Court judges constituted through the judgment falls into two broad categories: one involves concluding the probe on those accused of betting and spot fixing in the IPL scam and suggesting punishments. The other, more importantly, tasks the committee with identifying amendments needed in the BCCI’s memorandum of association, rules and regulations. The committee is expected to scrutinise a wide area of the BCCI’s functioning like the conduct of elections, eligibility and disqualifications for various BCCI posts, and measures to avoid conflicts of interest of the kind Srinivasan engendered. 

The judgment says the end-goal is to “streamline the working of BCCI to make it more responsive to the expectations of the public at large and to bring transparency in practices and procedures followed by BCCI”. It is too early to predict whether the committee, which includes former Chief Justice of India RM Lodha who made a laudable attempt last year at reforming the CBI, will choose to focus on the more unglamorous, but far-reaching, task of BCCI restructuring rather than the sensational betting charges against Gurunath Meiyappan, Raj Kundra and others. Another limitation is that the judgment entrusts the three-member committee with submitting its recommendations for restructuring to the BCCI itself. Considering how the BCCI has protected its turf, it is doubtful whether the recommendations will find any traction with BCCI top honchos. In fact, most BCCI officials were complicit in the amendment to Clause 6.2.4 that allowed Srinivasan to function as a BCCI administrator and an IPL team-owner. It took the Supreme Court’s intervention on Thursday to quash this amendment. Ironically, despite all the claims of being a private body, most of the state cricket associations have political representatives and are led by politicians like Sharad Pawar, Arun Jaitley, Rajiv Shukla and Amit Shah. Srinivasan is a symptom of the rot within the BCCI; but little will change as long as the conditions that allow it to function as an oligarchy endure.