BCCI Woes: SC to resume hearing in IPL spot-fixing case, Johri issue ‘on anvil’
A two-member Supreme Court bench comprising Justice SA Bobde and Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre will resume the hearing of BCCI IPL spot-fixing case of 2013 in Court No. 5 on Tuesday.
There is also a likelihood that petitioner in the case Aditya Verma, secretary of Cricket Association of Bihar, will file objections over the manner in which the recent sexual harassment probe against CEO Rahul Johri was conducted.
One more issue that is likely to be taken up concerns the request of SC-appointed Committee of Administrators (COA) to take a call on handing over the sealed envelope containing 13 tainted names of players and administrators in the IPL spot-fixing case. The list was submitted by Justice Mudgal Committee, that preceded the Lodha panel to the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) of the BCCI for further investigations.
As far as the sexual harassment case is concerned, member of COA Diana Edulji has made her displeasure public over the manner in which the probe was conducted by a three-member independent committee.
The transcripts of the depositions have only been made available to COA members and not to the BCCI office-bearers. And hence, two female employees who had complained are threatening to make their deposition public in order to prove that “neither their charges were taken seriously nor the people they named as witness were called to prove their charges”.
Even the former chief of ACSU Neeraj Kumar is of the opinion that transcripts of respective depositions should be circulated amongst the office-bearers and to people who deposed in order to come clean on this sensitive matter.
“I mentioned the incident of BCCI woman employee before the committee. But retired Justice (Rakesh Sharma) informed me during the probe that since Johri had already given a written apology, the woman employee was not called to depose,” Kumar told DNA.
“Veena (Gowda) has emerged as the lone voice of sanity. I can’t imagine that any other person in such a position (BCCI CEO) of authority would have survived after such adverse comments,” added Kumar.
The observations of lawyer-activist Veena Gowda, the only one with a a dissenting view in the panel, are increasingly becoming the focus of attention. She specifically mentioned conduct of Johri during Birmingham incident during the Champions Trophy, where the woman complainantdid ask the panel to summon few individuals to confirm her side of story.
Gowda called Johri’s behaviour ‘inappropriate’ and added that it reflects badly on the BCCI.
Election dates
Another notable issue before the court will be to take a call on the COA’s request to finalise the election date in BCCI as per the newly-amended constitution.
When the COA filed its 10th status report, seven state units including Karnataka, Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Nagaland were listed under the non-compliant category.
Further, the COA had asked these units to furnish a compliance certificate, failing which their right to vote at general body meetings of the BCCI be suspended and further actions be initiated.
The case is not any different for the 10 units, who were partially compliant with the Apex court orders. It includes Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Bengal, Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Manipur and Goa cricket associations. Among them, Bengal and TNCA have accepted all but one of the recommendations.
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