Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Tuesday became the first BCCI office-bearer to openly call for president N. Srinivasan’s resignation in the wake of the spot-fixing scandal and said the Board should take entire responsibility for the fiasco.
While Mr. Scindia wanted Mr. Srinivasan to stay out of office until after the case of his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan was decided, another Union Minister and senior Board functionary Farooq Abdullah said there was no reason for the beleaguered president to quit.
Two days after Mr. Srinivasan claimed that he had the full support of the Board members, Mr. Scindia told PTI: “From my point of view, not for a second am I assuming that anybody is guilty. Having said that, in the interest of propriety and in the interest of the game at this point of time when there is a question mark surrounding an individual, surrounding the team (CSK) and surrounding the manager of that team who happens to be a family member, I believe in all sense of the word propriety that Mr. Srinivasan must step aside.”
“If you consider the conflict of interest he is in as one of his family members is alleged to have committed wrongdoing, then propriety demands that he should step aside. I would have done the same had I been in his place. Willy-nilly, we are responsible for the wrongdoing of our family members to some extent. Example has to be set from the top.”
Mr. Scindia, who is Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association president and chairman of the BCCI Finance Committee, said Mr. Srinivasan could be reinstated if Gurunath was absolved of the charges of betting in the Indian Premier League after investigation.
The former Indian spinner, Erapalli Prasanna, also demanded the resignation of Mr. Srinivasan, saying he was morally obliged to quit because of the allegations against his son-in-law.
Meanwhile, Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni maintained a stoic silence on the spot-fixing scandal.
The BCCI had issued a diktat to journalists, attending Dhoni’s pre-departure press conference in Mumbai, not to ask questions on the spot-fixing scandal, which rocked the cash-rich IPL after the arrest of three cricketers including S. Sreesanth.
When Dhoni was asked why he, as leader of the Indian team, had not responded to the question, media manager R.N. Baba stopped a scribe from probing the skipper further and asked him to stick to questions on Champions Trophy.
