Launching a scathing attack on the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for defying its orders, the Supreme Court, on September 28, said that the BCCI was ‘behaving like lords’ in stalling its proposed reforms.
The apex court made these scathing observations after the Justice Lodha committee submitted its status report, saying the BCCI was not implementing its recommendations aimed at reforming the country’s cricket governing body.
Heading a special bench that had appointed the Justice Lodha panel, Chief Justice of India, T S Thakur, said, “You (BCCI) are behaving like lords. You better fall in line or we will make you fall in line.”
The Lodha panel also pleaded for an early hearing, to which Thakur replied, “We will hear the matter”.
The move comes after the BCCI violated the panel guideline by appointing a five-member selection committee during its Annual General Meeting on September 21.
Critcising the BCCI for ignoring the Lodha panel’s directions , the apex court has directed the cricket governing body to furnish explanations regarding their reported non-compliance before October 6.
The panel, formulated in the wake of the 2013 IPL spot-fixing and betting scandal, had recommended a set of sweeping reforms for the BCCI. Among these recommendation were the adoption of “one state, one vote” policy, restriction of tenure of office bearers, introduction of a cooling period for administrators and reducing the size of the existing five-member selection panel to three.
Soon after the top court approved the proposals, the panel had set two deadlines for BCCI. They had asked the body to make changes in their constitution by September 30 and form a nine-member apex committee to replace the existing working committee by December 15.
