Cleaning cricket, Lodha style

When the Supreme Court (SC), on July 18 put its seal on the recommendations by the Justice RM Lodha panel and made them a part of its orders, the committee reforms offered the best hope for sorting out the mess in Indian cricket. The Lodha Committee, also comprising retired judges Ashok Bhan and R Raveendran, was set up by India’s apex court in January 2015 to pronounce the quantum of punishment for those found guilty by the Justice Mukul Mudgal report pertaining to the IPL betting and spot-fixing scandal.

The Justice Lodha panel’s recommendations are comprehensive and straightforward. And the most significant reform the Lodha committee aims to push for is to bring in strict eligibility criteria for BCCI office-bearers to safeguard it from politicians.

The SC has accepted the Lodha panel’s recommendation that “No officer bearer should be a minister or government servant.” By fixing three-year tenures and insisting that no office-bearer can hold two consecutive terms, the nexus between politics and cricket has almost been controlled forever. Former BCCI president Shashank Manohar was the first one to implement most of the recommendations but then he had to bow out under alleged pressure by almost all the member states. The stakes are skyhigh as the entire BCCI or state officials will then be forced to resign, including the current president Anurag Thakur.

Why was Lodha Committee formed?

The entire episode started after Delhi Police arrested three cricketers — S Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan — from the Rajasthan Royals franchise on charges of spot-fixing during the 2013 Indian Premier League.

In fact, Rajasthan co-owner Raj Kundra in June 2013 confessed to police during questioning that he was placing bets on his IPL team through a known bookie, who happens to be his friend. As if this was not enough, Mumbai Police then arrested actor Vindu Dara Singh and BCCI president N Srinivasan’s son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan for alleged betting and having links with bookies.

When a public interest litigation by Cricket Association of Bihar’s Secretary Aditya Verma reached the SC, it asked then-BCCI Chief Srinivasan on March 25, 2014 to voluntarily step down from his position to ensure a fair investigation into the betting and spot-fixing charges levied against his own son-in-law. At the time, Meiyappan was team principal of IPL champion team Chennai Super Kings. And finally, the Lodha panel was constituted to look into the functioning of the cricket board and suggest changes to its constitution to enhance transparency and accountability.

The hard work ahead

The Lodha panel had tedious consultations with many former players, current sports journalists and many other cricket administrators of repute that helped it form an  82-point questionnaire which was sent to BCCI and state associations to understand how cricket is run.

The questionnaire had eight sections, which included diverse topics from the role of the Board’s stakeholders to the election processes. The basis and formation of its various committees, player welfare, conflict of interest and transparency in the IPL’s functioning were the other topics of inquiry.

After detailed discussions on various answers that it got from various stake holders, Lodha panel finally submitted its report to the SC on January 4, 2016.

Landmark reforms suggested

The Lodha panel in its recommendations suggested a complete overhaul of the way BCCI was being run. This was the first time in the history of Indian sport that such suggestions were made to get rid of the corruption and nepotism. Not suprisingly, its recommendations did not find many, or even any, takers at BCCI, the richest sports body in the country.

There was no doubt in the minds of any cricket lovers that if the Lodha panel suggestions were implemented, then it would mean curtains for those running cricket in the country over decades.

The likes of Punjab’s MP Pandove, Haryana’s Anirudh Chaudhry, Delhi’s CK Khanna, Saurashtra’s Niranjan Shah are some of the names who have been controlling state associations for much over three decades, largely because of their highly effective juggling skills of memberships at their respective associations.

How else is one to explain the overnight change in the power structure in the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association, led by current BCCI president Anurag Thakur? After taking over as HPCA president in 2000, Thakur championed a dramatic amendment of the cricket body’s constitution. Till then, the electoral college of the society comprised of the presidents and secretaries of the 12 district cricket associations affiliated with the state body. This meant that once in five years, 24 voters (plus outgoing members of the executive committee) elected the president and the incoming executive committee who made key decisions. Under Thakur, the HPCA electoral college was expanded by installing 25 life members — largely comprising members’ relatives — with voting rights; all of them were nominated at the discretion of Thakur. The president was given wide powers to nominate the executive committee.

In Delhi, a tailor-turned cricket administrator, Khanna learnt the art of controlling proxies to make Delhi & District Cricket Association his personal property. His control over the DDCA has been such that even renowned politicians like Arun Jaitley have had to depend on his collected proxies to win elections at the cricket body.

Why the delay?

Though the apex court has given a deadline to BCCI for implementing the Lodha report, the Board, as expected, has adopted a delaying tactic by forwarding the report to the state associations to study.

As a result, the SC’s deadline of March 3, 2016, to the BCCI was missed by a mile. In fact, the argument that BCCI made in court was that since the Lodha Committee had taken close to a year to make the report, it should get at least two months to discuss, debate and deliberate the recommendations. Subsequently, the BCCI held a meeting on February 19 and pointed to a handful of anomalies in the Lodha report that related to certain recommendations such as bringing the BCCI under the Right to Information Act. (RTI), the one state, one vote ‘rule, and age and tenure caps for all office-bearers.

The first salvo came from the Mumbai Cricket Association on February 22, when it filed an intervention stating the ‘‘one state, one vote’ recommendation would hurt it.

Only two days before the March 3 deadline, the BCCI filed an affidavit stating it had implemented some of the Lodha Panel recommendations. However, it had no intention of implementing one state, one vote rule, age cap of 70 years for an office-bearer or a board official, limits on office bearers and restriction on advertisements during Tests and ODIs.

The Supreme Court on March 3 pulled up BCCI for its  continued resistance to change, but said it would ask the Lodha Committee to reconsider some of the suggestions. Later, the Lodha panel did consider legitimising demands and relaxing some rules relating to TV advertisements.

The Supreme Court accepted the majority of the Lodha Committee recommendations on July 18, 2016 and gave the BCCI between four and six months to implement them. It was on August 9 that BCCI was given a specific timeline by the Lodha panel to implement 15 specific steps related to constitutional amendments by October 15. When former Justice Katju termed the Supreme Court’s ruling on Lodha reforms “unconstitutional,” the daggers were out in BCCI to shred the Lodha panel recommendations completely.

Not stopping there, BCCI made a plea to take the case before a larger bench. Another review petition was also filed in the SC, though this was also dismissed on December 13, 2016. Chief Justice of India TS Thakur had warned the BCCI on September 28, to “fall in line” and “not allow them to defy orders any more”.

The Lodha panel even sought for the removal of BCCI’s top brass, including Thakur and secretary Ajay Shirke, for violation of the apex court’s orders.

The panel also sought replacement of the current management with a set of administrators who would “ensure the smooth transition from the old to the new system recommended by the committee.” On October 17, the court reserved its order after the BCCI counsel sought more time to persuade its state units, a plea the court rejected.

Final over

With the review petition dismissed two days ago, BCCI’s only hope now is a curative petition. The other issue was regarding perjury, or lying under oath, when the apex court asked Thakur to file an affidavit on whether he discussed Court’s decision on July 18 for the appointment of a nominee of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on the BCCI Apex Council during the ICC meeting in Dubai.

On both accounts, the Court found Thakur prima facie guilty of contempt of court and liable to face criminal prosecution for perjury. At one point, a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India TS Thakur threatened that once the Supreme Court passes an order to initiate prosecution, no other court would dare to come in between and the BCCI president would have “no way out but go to jail.”

Though the Court has reserved its interim orders to be pronounced before Justice Thakur’s retirement on January 03, 2017, it did make it clear that Lodha panel “thinks he (BCCI president and his associates) should step down as he is obstructing reforms.”

The panel suggested three names — GK Pillai (former Home Secretary), Vinod Rai (former CAG) and Mohinder Amarnath (former India all-rounder) — as interim administrators — to take over the working of BCCI and to oversee the implementations of the reforms suggested in the July 18 verdict.