Former president of Hyderabad Cricket Association Arshad Ayub and the ex-secretary K. John Manoj said that their expulsion from the HCA by the ruling group “was illegal and that the incumbent secretary T. Seshnarayan had no right to do so”.
“In fact, our Special Leave Petition in the Supreme Court challenging the very election process, which facilitated Mr Seshnarayan taking over as secretary, is expected to come up for hearing on July 14,” they informed the media here on Saturday. All the allegations of misappropriation of funds during our tenure are absolutely false and there is a deliberate attempt by the ruling group to mislead public and the cricketing fraternity in particular,” Mr. Arshad and Mr. John said in the presence of their legal counsel E.V. Venugopal.
“We are also going to incorporate the other subjects like not implementing the Justice Lodha panel guidelines during the election process and many violations of the HCA Constitution by the ruling group in the SLP,” Mr Venugopal said.
“The whole action of suspension was illegal as the two respected members were not given any show cause notice nor the chance to question it. And ironically, the expulsion was not on the agenda of the HCA general body meeting,” Mr. Venugopal said.
“We welcome any enquiry into our transactions. Let me state that we are the only Association when I was the president to give an undertaking which saw to that proper auditing of accounts was done thrice,” Mr. Arshad said.
“It is strange that Dr. M.V. Sridhar (BCCI General Manager, Operations) who sent a mail to the HCA to book flight tickets for the Hyderabad Ranji squad for a match in Kolkata after it was shifted from Tripura (which was subsequently rescheduled) is now blaming us for doing the same. It is false to say that we have not credited the cancellation and the refunded money in the HCA accounts,” Mr. Arshad explained.
“We are ready for an open debate with anyone who is levelling allegations against us on grounds of misappropriation of funds. We have done the best service to the game of cricket which is evident by the way Hyderabad team has reached the knock-out phase of Ranji Trophy and three players (Mohd Siraj, Chama Milind and Tanmay Agarwal) were selected to represent India-A teams,” Mr. Arshad said.
