The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed the charges levelled by the BCCI that the Justice R.M. Lodha Committee had exceeded its brief and was trying to “run cricket” in India.
One of the allegations against the Lodha Committee was that it drastically cut short the period the Supreme Court gave the BCCI to implement the panel reforms.
The BCCI had argued that while the July 18 judgment of the apex court gave the BCCI a six-month window to implement the changes, the Lodha panel chopped it to just two months.
Countering the charge against the Committee it had appointed to reform cricket, a Bench led by Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur said the judgment only conveyed a “hope” that the transition and implementation of the Lodha recommendations would happen in six months.
The Lodha Committee, meanwhile, was given full authority to fix specific timelimits, the Supreme Court clarified.
“The broad framework of time prescribed by this Court does not preclude the Committee from specifying timelines. The Committee, entrusted with the task of supervising the implementation process, was permitted to lay down suitable timelines. The Committee was specifically allowed to do so to implement the judgment... ” the Supreme Court reasoned.
It also dismissed a statement made by the BCCI to its Working Committee that the July 18 judgment could be put on hold till legal remedies like the review and curative petitions were exhausted.
“The judgment of this court has to be implemented as it stands. A party to a litigation cannot be heard to say that it would treat a judgment of this court as not having a binding effect unless the
review or curative petitions that it has filed are dismissed,” the Supreme Court held.
“We are inclined to take a serious view of the conduct of the BCCI in the present case. There has been no change in the position of the BCCI. The intransigence continues,” the Supreme Court observed.
