Lodha committee impact

As expected, the Justice RM Lodha Commission, appointed by the Supreme Court to help reform the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), has recommended sweeping changes in the sports body’s functioning. If implemented, these changes will transform Indian cricket.

Most will agree that the Justice Lodha committee has exceeded expectations. But the big question now is whether the BCCI, under the leadership of Mr Clean (Shashank Manohar) will oblige cricket lovers by accepting it in toto?

Manohar came in for huge praise from the Justice Lodha panel, as it read out its report in the media, for starting the initial set of reforms in BCCI. Though many in the board, who have survived only because of the proxy support they enjoy in their respective states, are not in a mood to challenge this report in the apex court, the members of the panel, in private, believe that “all of its recommendations will have to be implemented”. The ultimate decision now rests with the Supreme Court and that’s when we will know what the final outcome of this entire process will look like.

However, most of the recommendations are truly welcomed by cricket lovers because they follow the principles of good governance and have drawn upon from none other than the International Olympic Committee (IOC) charter. The age, term and tenure have not just been recommended by Justice Lodha panel, but was in the past being advocated and drafted in the National Sports Bill 2013, which has failed to see the light of the day because there too similar pressure from politicos prevailed.

Now that the matter would be decided by none other than the bench headed by the Chief Justice of India, TS Thakur, there is little doubt that people who have been heading state cricket associations for decades would have no option but to make way for others. The prevailing practice to hold on to a post till perpetuity, erodes accountability and turns an association into a monopoly or a cartel.

There are many associations within the BCCI which are being headed by the same people for more than two or three decades. In fact, like IOC, BCCI may now have a system in which no one can hold office for more than a cumulative nine years. And, more importantly, a cooling period of three years after one term of the similar period would even ensure better transparency and accountability.

In simple terms, no one person in the future can be BCCI president for two consecutive terms. Another welcome step could be having a ‘zone free’ BCCI.

If the Lodha panel suggestions are implemented, then zones would only be for conducting tournaments. The selection committee would consist of only three members, instead of the current five — one from each zone, ie, East, West, Central, North and South.

More importantly, BCCI elections will no longer be conducted on zonal basis. This means a 2013 repeat, when there was no election because all six South Zone units professed loyalty to N Srinivasan, will no longer be possible. To illustrate this phenomenon, despite a majority of the associations ostensibly opposed to Srinivasan in 2013, the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association strongman managed to get elected unopposed because he had pocketed all six proposing votes from the South. It is for this reason that the Lodha panel has proposed to reduce the number of vice presidents from five to one, and to reduce the size of the working committee to nine also makes for better and more effective governance.

Another landmark change pertains to the style of functioning of the state associations. All state associations would need to audit their accounts, which is indeed a right step.

There are some associations in Indian cricket that are plagued by corruption. Some of them have no accountability in terms of how crores of rupees are spent. Take the examples of Goa and Delhi, which have been facing allegations of not just mismanagement, but huge financial bungling.

Several government agencies have posed serious questions over “what happened to the hundreds of crores of subsidy that was paid to the association over the last 10 years?” And these two associations are not alone; a similar question can be asked to many other associations across the country. And that’s where the Lodha panel would face stiff opposition for coming up with two sets of recommendations. First, it has recommended the ‘one state-one vote’ principle and the second, ‘one person-one post’. On paper, this is perfectly understandable and has been in principle implemented by many political parties as well. But the old rotten structure of Indian cricket is such that most of our present administrators would be either voted out or booted out if the new formula is implemented.

According to this recommendation, the BCCI will now decide which amongst the existing three associations in Maharashtra — Mumbai, Cricket Club of India (CCI) and Maharashtra — will retain the voting power. Despite the fact that all three will retain their teams in the elite Ranji Trophy league, two of the three associations will no longer be able to get its representatives elected in the BCCI.

In simple terms, present chief Manohar, in all likelihood, would be the last one at the BCCI’s helm from Vidarbha.

The same principle would apply to Gujarat, where Saurashtra and Baroda are likely to lose voting power. This formula is necessary for Indian cricket because BCCI top bosses in the past have booted out India’s third-most populous state Bihar out of its fold for no real reason, but made Jharkhand BCCI voting member,  despite the fact that it was created only in the year 2000.

During the course of debate in the Supreme Court, the board was reminded that “it picks Team India and not Team BCCI, which amounts to performing a public function”. Justice Lodha for this reason has recommended one state-one vote pattern to make sure that six states of North-East are not left out from playing in the national cricket team.

BCCI is also likely to oppose one man-one post system strongly because, for example, Anurag Thakur is BCCI’s secretary because he is Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association (HPCA) president. This means Thakur is BCCI secretary by virtue of the fact that he has full control over HPCA.

The unnecessary issues which have been floated by BCCI members regarding rotation policy of holding matches, where a state will get to host one match, is baseless and has not been mentioned in Justice Lodha report. It would be BCCI’s prerogative to select the Test centres or One-day centres based on facilities and other parameters. And by bringing the BCCI under the ambit of the Rights To Information (RTI) Act, administrative and financial matters will now come under scrutiny. This proposal has been integral to the government’s draft  of the sports bill.

All said and done, India’s cricket administration, in the aftermath of the Lodha report, is going to witness a sea change. The sooner the BCCI changes itself, the better it would be for the future of world cricket.

The author is senior assistant editor with dna; @shekharluthra