BCCI: Amicus urges SC to take stringent steps for transparency

Senior advocate Gopal Subramanium today urged the Supreme Court to take "stringent steps" to ensure implementation of the recommendations of Justice R M Lodha committee to bring transparency in the BCCI.
Subramanium, who is assisting the top court as an amicus curiae in the BCCI case, sought directions against the top office bearers of the cash-rich cricket body, including acting secretary Amitabh Chaudhary, to restrain them from being associated with the Board.
The senior lawyer, in his written submissions filed before a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra, said working and management of the BCCI should be entrusted to the apex-court apppinted Committee of Administrators (COA) until fresh BCCI elections are held in accordance with the new Constitution.

"It was expected that after such sweeping directions the principal judgement will finally be implemented. However, the events that transpired thereafter demonstrates that the stakeholders are unwilling to implement reforms...
"A close scrutiny of these applications reveal that under the guise of seeking recall, the state associations had in fact challenged the principal judgement, thus in effect seeking a review of the principal judgement. This is clearly an abuse of process of this court," Subramanium said.
He has also sought issuance of contempt notice to the existing office bearers of BCCI, including acting president C K Khanna, for obstructing the implementation of the judgement of the court.

He sought the court's direction to "clarify that the period of cooling off will apply in respect of all office bearers of BCCI and State/Member Associations such that no person will be entitled to hold an office as an office-bearer immediately upon the conclusion of a 3-year term, either in BCCI or in a State Association until the exhaustion of the cooling off period.

"Direct that the new fund disbursement policy is made applicable with immediate effect and all further disbursements of funds by the BCCI to the State/Member Associations shall only be in accordance with the new fund disbursement policy framed by the COA," he said.

Subramanium asked the court to constitute a separate committee headed by a former apex court judge and comprising a retired deputy Comptroller and Auditor General to conduct a forensic audit of each state association on the utilisation of funds disbursed to them.
"Restrain persons who are disqualified from being office bearers of their respective State/ Member Associations from being nominated as the representatives to attend any SGM or AGM of BCCI," he said.