BCCI to contest Lodha report in Supreme Court

The cricket control board has decided to go to the Supreme Court against full implementation of the Justice Lodha Committee’s recommendations. The board has authorised its secretary, Anurag Thakur, to file an affidavit in the apex court to point out the anomalies and difficulties in implementation of the recommendations.

The board was under pressure to respond to the Supreme Court on the issue before the March 3 deadline and convened a special general meeting here on Friday to get views of its various affiliates.

Thakur said the affidavit would be filed on March 3 itself but Rajiv Shukla was confident it could happen earlier. Senior lawyer K.K. Venugopal may plead BCCI’s case.

The board is apparently finding hard to implement the one state-one vote (set to affect six associations within the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat). To cut down selection panel to three is making them apprehensive, as two zones will remain unrepresented. Some other points in the affidavit are set to be, the age cap of 70 years and the cooling off period of three years between posts.

Not holding positions simultaneously in both state and BCCI like Thakur, treasurer Aniruddh Chaudhary and joint secretary Amitabh Chaudhary is another point deterring them.

Financially the most important point is about ‘having advertisement breaks only during lunch or tea in international matches” which will lead to BCCI losing around Rs 1,600 crores in revenues.

The board has apparently also told its state associations that they can file affidavits separately.

The cricket body however agreed to one of the Lodha panel’s recommendations on appointment of a CEO in the working committee that preceded the SGM.

However Shukla indicated that the posts of CEO and CFO were created “on the basis of the Project Transformation report.”

The BCCI members authorised president Shashank Manohar and Thakur to discuss the governance and financial restructuring of the ICC subject to such a redrawing being incorporated in the constitution of the ICC for permanency.

The ICC had recently decided to scrap the controversial constitutional amendments, which gave executive clout and financial power to India, Australia and England.