The Supreme Court on Friday vested all monetary and financial powers of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) with the Justice lodha Committee in a bid to starve the State associations of fund and force them to endorse the sweeping reforms in the functioning of the cricket bodies.
A Bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur, Justices AM Khanwilkar and Dhananjay Y Chandrachud also appointed an independent auditor to oversee BCCI accounts and its tendering process. It asked the lodha Committee to appoint an auditor of its choice and prescribe a threshold limit for awarding contracts so that any contract above this limit will require Committee’s approval.
“The BCCI shall forthwith cease and desist from disbursing funds to State associations for any purpose until state associations have passed separate resolutions adopting all reforms,” the court said. It said the State association presidents will be required to provide undertaking on affidavits before the lodha Committee and the court to abide by the resolution. This order is in continuation of the October 7 direction given by the Court which was not a blanket ban.
It was apprehended that the court may initiate contempt proceedings against BCCI president Anurag Thakur for not implementing the reforms and replace the Board’s top brass with a panel of administrators, as demanded by lodha Committee. But the SC decided to give the Board another chance after senior advocate Kapil Sibal submitted for the BCCI that the Board was in the process of persuading State associations to comply with the reforms.
As regards contempt action against the Board president, the court deferred this issue to the next date, December 5. In the meantime, it requested International Cricket Council (ICC) Chairman Shashank Manohar to file a response to Thakur’s claim that he did not seek a letter from the ICC on whether implementing the court’s order to have a CAG nominee on its Board could amount to Government interference. The court directed lodha Committee to supply a copy of the order to Manohar.
The court also took serious view of Board’s defiance to comply with its order on the ground that its review and curative petitions were yet to be heard.
“The judgment of this court has to be implemented as it stands. A party to a litigation cannot be heard to say it would treat a judgment of this Court as not having binding effect unless the review or curative petitions that it has filed are dismissed…we are inclined to take a serious view of the conduct of BCCI in the present case,” the court said.