The Committee of Administrators (CoA) has appealed to the Supreme Court to issue directions for the appointment of an Ombudsman, approve the new BCCI Conflict of Interest Rules (in accordance with the Lodha recommendations and validated by the apex court) and reconstitute the Steering Committee to establish the Cricket Players’ Association (CPA).
CoA has put forth the above in its Sixth Status Report filed on January 24. The apex Court, which had listed the case for Monday (Jan. 29) has said it will hear the case related to the Justice Lodha Committee recommendations on Feb. 23.
The BCCI has not appointed an Ombudsman after Justice (Retd.) A.P. Shah’s one-year term ended in September 2016. The CoA submitted a list of six retired SC judges to the BCCI and asked it to choose one of them at a SGM convened on July 26, 2017. This, according to the CoA’s Status Report, has not happened despite the SGM authorising its office-bearers for the same.
The CoA has constituted a working group comprising Kapil Dev, Aunshuman Gaekwad, Bharat Reddy and Shanta Rangaswamy to assist G.K. Pillai (former Union Home Secretary) to begin the process of forming a CPA. It has asked the apex court to include the above names in the Steering Committee, because from among the members of the first committee named by the apex court, Diana Edulji became a member of CoA and Anil Kumble and Mohinder Amarnath have said they do not want to be part of the committee.
The CoA has also pointed out in the Status Report the conduct of the BCCI acting-treasurer Anirudh Chaudhry, saying that the latter “appears determined to use his position to undermine the authority and functioning of the CoA whilst taking care not to expressly breach the same.”
