The Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court, which
started as a case of corruption in the 2013 Indian Premier League (IPL),
has finally consumed the Indian cricket board and possibly its highly
ambitious strongman Narayanswamy Srinivasan.
In the last three
decades or so, cricket matters came before India's apex court more than
once, and each time the legal luminaries saved the board and its chiefs,
areeing to do what was asked of them.
Happily, this time the
Supreme Court took the matter more seriously and decided to cleanse the
system. By disciplining the board, the court has sent out a message to
all sports organisations that they are only the custodians of the faith
of the fans and they should not behave like monarchs.
The court
has also once and for all brought the board under judicial scrutiny,
saying that it performs a public function and it cannot claim to be an
autonomous institution. The next step, perhaps, is to bring it under the
Right to Information (RTI) to make its functioning more transparent.
The
only fear is of unimaginable consequences which can crop up with a
spate of PILs, asking for a lot of uncomfortable information that might
embarrass the officials of not only the board but also its affiliated
state associations.
So be it. The public would be better off it
gets to know how a state association constructed a stadium in a
non-descript town when it could well have come up in better-connected
places. Or, how come a key board official is running his office from a
suite in a five-star hotel, or how associations hired chairs for
international matches for amounts at half of which they could well have
bought and owned these.
All tenders and contracts will now come under public scrutiny, bringing far more transparency in all dealings.
The
court has appointed a high-powered committee of three of its own
retired judges, headed by a former Chief Justice, with wide-ranging
powers and freedom to redraft the BCCI constitution, deleting the
clauses that were brought in to help individuals perpetuate their
hegemony.
When Sharad Pawar became the board president, his team
prepared a vision paper in which one of the draft clauses sought a
uniform constitution for both the BCCI and its affiliates. But it was
shot down, critics claiming that it was a cumbersome process as some
state units came under the Registrar of Cooperative Societies and some
others under the Company Law Board.
The panel can now take up
the issue and draft a model constitution binding on all state units.
After all, what is so special about the cricket board that it has states
with three associations when all other national sports federations have
a single vote from a state each?
Tinkering with the statute may
not be easy and may even lead to litigations, but the apex court panel
with unbridled powers can overcome all messy issues and give the board a
new constitution and a clean slate.
The board has asked for
it as the saner voices were in the past silenced by the brute "Hail My
Leader" majority in the monolith. The secretary and the treasurer quit
their posts but failed to make Srinivasan see the writing on the wall.
At
the board's working committee meeting in Chennai in May, former board
chief Indedrjit Singh Bindra told Srinivasan bluntly that he should go
to save the board. When in power, people suffer from hubris and and are
blind to reason.
Whatever the big guns of the board may have
said inside its four walls or for public consumption, they just could
not stop Srinivasan from riding roughshod over the 30-member House. Some
of them even acquiesced with him.
That's what Jagmohan Dalmiya,
who is most likely to take over the reins of the board, did when he was
presiding over it till Sharad Pawar, a powerful UPA minister, came along
to end his reign with the same government votes.
Now Arun
Jaitley, another influential minister in the NDA government, and the
all-powerful president of the Bharatiya Janata Party Amit Shah are doing
the political and cricket calculations to keep the board under their
thumb. Jaitley could favour the more pliable Congressman Rajiv Shukla,
but knows he need not court a disaster cricket-wise, and might plump for
Dalmiya.
Even Srinivasan might prefer Dalmiya, provided Jaitley
assures him that the Kolkata baron would vacate the chair if and when
the ACC boss overcomes his personal problems and return to the fold.
That can only be next year.
The two other operative parts of the
130-page apex court judgment are on the board elections and the
eligibility criteria for the candidates to contest.
It said the
board should hold the twice-postponed elections within six weeks from
the date of the order, but in accordance with the prevalent rules and
regulations subject to the condition that "no one who has any commercial
interest in the BCCI events (including Mr. N. Srinivasan) shall be
eligible for contesting the elections for any post whatsoever."
By
specifically naming Srinivasan in the order, the court made it amply
clear that he is barred from contesting the election. Going a step
further, the judges made it clear that the disqualification clause will
be applicable to all those holding commercial interest in the
board-conducted events or till the time the apex court appointed
three-judge panel decides on the quantum of punishment to those liable.
The
rider, "whichever is later" attached to it makes it impossible for
Srinivasan to contest the election since the panel has been given six
months to decide the issue and the election has to be held within six
weeks.
Srinivasan's lawyers perhaps are thinking of seeking
clarification on the words "whichever is later" as normally it is
"whichever is earlier", but nothing may emerge from it since it has been
specifically done to prevent any board member taking advantage till the
panel decides on the quantum of punishment to the guilty.
(Veturi Srivatsa is a senior journalist. The views expressed here are personal. He can be reached at [email protected])
