The three BCCI officials cannot attend the meeting even as a nominee of the states
For the first time in last decade or so, a Special General Meeting of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Wednesday will be without names like N Srinivasan, Niranjan Shah and Rajiv Shukla.
This is a result of Supreme Court’s special bench — comprising of Justice Dipak Misra, Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice DY Chandrachud — restraining disqualified state office-bearers from attending the SGM. The three BCCI officials cannot attend the meeting even as a nominee of the states.
The Apex court was categorical while delivering the orders at a hearing on Monday that “BCCI needs to implement the entire SC orders of July 18, 2016. The made an exception for two or three issues which include more than one vote to states like Maharashtra and Gujarat, voting rights to established teams like Railways and Services and increasing number of selectors from three to five along with their prescribed eligibility criteria.
The tone of Court turned harsh when BCCI’s secretary counsel Puneet Bali said that “seven-member special committee of board” have pointed out few difficulties in its report. Court asked Bali, “What committee?”
“There is just one committee and that’s Lodha committee. There can’t be any other committee for us,” said Justice Misra rejecting BCCI’s special committee formed in the last SGM.
This decision comes on the back of Committee of Administrators (COA) chairman Vinod Rai’s complaint that Srinivasan and Shah had been attending the SGM despite being disqualified.
The COA report had stated that such disqualified persons have vested interests. “If the judgement is implemented, such disqualified persons will have to relinquish control over their respective state associations,” it was claimed in the report.
Taking a dig at the COA, Srinivasan wrote in his affidavit filed before the Court that “when I talk, COA says I’m disrupting. If I don’t, they have no complaints. I too have the freedom of expression”.
The Court’s orders would put in bind many state associations, which have been sending ineligible officials to all the BCCI meetings.
Ready to reopen case
The three-member bench, however, made it clear that “it is ready to deliberate on Lodha panel recommendations like ‘One State One Vote’, increasing number of selectors and their eligibility”.
However, this came after declaring that “there can’t be any debate on giving one vote to each state”.
Deeming the contentious “more than a vote to states like Maharashtra and Gujarat or making Railways and Services a full member again”, SC said it is ready to reopen the case but before that “go and implement all the other report”.
Going by top BCCI official, the decision on One State One Vote proposal to be reopen for deliberation has come as a big relief. “You will definitely get a clear picture after the SGM on Wednesday,” said the official.
The Bench fixed the matter for further hearing on August 18 and said it would consider only two issues — the implementation of the Lodha panel recommendations as far as practicable by the state /associations as well as the names to fill up the vacancies in the COA.
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 "N Srinivasan and Niranjan Shah")
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