India’s Supreme Court has reserved its judgement in the case concerning implementation of the lodha Committee recommendations by the BCCI. There will be no further hearing in the case and the two-judge bench, comprising Chief Justice TS Thakur and Justice Ibrahim Kalifulla, will submit the written judgement to the concerned parties. The judgement is likely to be delivered before July 21, the date when Justice Kalifulla retires.
The apex court made critical remarks on the issue of fund allocation and utilisation after it was told that office- bearers of Goa Cricket Association, which in the last five years had received `141 crore from BCCI, were recently arrested on charges of misappropriation.
Amicus curiae and senior advocate Gopal Subramaniam not only briefed a bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur and Justice F M I Kalifulla about the arrest of the president, Secretary and Treasurer of the GCA, but also spoke about the affairs of other boards like Saurashtra Cricket Association and Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA).
While he was making the submissions, senior advocate Nalini Chidambram, appearing for Cricket Association of Bihar whose secretary Aditya Verma has approached the apex court, trained the guns on the newly-appointed BCCI president Anurag Thakur, claiming he was facing three criminal cases and has been elected to head the cash-rich sports body.
Subramanian supported her submissions saying that the lodha committee had said if any person is charge sheeted, it is a serious issue and he should be kept away from the affairs of the sports body.
He said the affairs of cricket of Saurashtra Cricket Association was such that not only its members, but people associated with it like drivers, servants and children were the members of the association.
Subramaniam also touched upon the messy affairs of DDCA, saying a postal address from Shakur Basti in North West Delhi showed it was a 48 square meter area, but it had 14 members of the association.
“How many members can live in 48 square metresIJ But from one such address, there are 14 members in the DDCA,” he said adding that even sham bills were created for payments and contractors not paid for work done at Kotla stadium.
Subramaniam further said that the state of affairs in Kotla stadium here was such that seats for children or the disabled were not available.
This was referred to in the report of Justice Mukul Mudgal who was appointed by Delhi High Court as an observer to look after the affairs during India-South Africa test match and IPl matches.
The bench then asked senior advocate KK Venugopal, who appeared for BCCI, as to why no utilisation certificates were sought from the state cricket associations who were allocated funds.
“Now since May 10, you have been seeking utilisation certificates but what happened before thatIJ Why were you sleeping all these yearsIJ Why were utilisation certifications not soughtIJ You were disbursing funds without the utilisation certificates,” the bench said adding that there should be some mechanism for monitoring and allocation of funds.
Venugopal said BCCI was trying to implement the lodha panel recomendations one by one and those associations and action has been taken against those office bearers who were found to be indulging in irregularities. “We have taken appropriate actions against Goa, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir and North Eastern states and funds have been stopped,” Venugopal said.