The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued show-cause notice to BCCI office-bearers Amitabh Choudhary and Anirudh Chaudhry to explain their alleged lack of initiative and ability to push forward the Justice Lodha Committee reforms in the Special General Meeting (SGM) held on July 26.
Choudhary, who is the BCCI acting-secretary, and acting-treasurer Chaudhry were accused by Supreme Court’s amicus curiae and senior advocate Gopal Subramanium of being the “hidden, preponderant voices in the SGM of July 26 who just did not want to implement the Lodha reforms”.
Subramanium drew the court’s attention to the scathing fifth status report submitted by the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) led by former Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai, which recommended to the court to remove all the current BCCI office-bearers, including the acting-secretary, treasurer and the acting-president, C.K. Khanna for their non-compliance with the Supreme Court’s principal judgement of July 18, 2016 to implement Lodha reforms in the next six months.
Sen’s feedback
Subramanium referred to how former Supreme Court judge, Justice Vikramjit Sen, who was present in the July 26 SGM as the Delhi High Court-appointed administrator for Delhi and District Cricket Association, expressed strong reservations about the stakeholders’ hostility to the reforms.
Senior advocate Puneet Bali, who represents the BCCI office-bearers, objected to Subramanium’s submission that not a single recommendation of the Lodha Committee has been implemented so far. He submitted that his clients were actually “helpless”.
“After the July 26 meeting, emails were sent to each and every official to comply with Lodha reforms. I am only the secretary or the president. I am helpless,” Bali submitted. “Beseechment is not the solution, Mr. Bali. You have expressed your helplessness. Ok. So we will issue show-cause notice to them. None of the Lodha reforms have been implemented so far,” Justice Misra orally addressed Mr. Bali.
The Bench of Justices Dipak Misra, A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud court referred to its July 24 order, directing that “the recommendations of the Justice Lodha Committee report as far as practicable, barring the issues which have been raised pertaining to membership, number of members of the selection committee, concept of associate membership, etc.” should be implemented.
Objective
“The purpose is to implement the report as far as practicable and, thereafter, it shall be debated as to how the scheme of things can be considered so that the cricket, the ‘gentleman’s game’, remains nearly perfect,” the court had recorded in its July 24 order.
The court directed the CoA to draft the BCCI Constitution by Sept. 19. While drafting the Constitution, the CoA would however keep in mind the July 24 Supreme Court order red-flagging the three issues of membership, number of members of selection committee and concept of associate membership.
The Bench said it would open the floor for all stakeholders to debate the draft constitution once it was handed over to the court.
