The Supreme Court on Monday said it is very difficult to accept that there is no conflict of interest in N Srinivasan’s role as the BCCI president and owner of IPL franchise Chennai Super kings.
Hearing the IPL spot-fixing case, the apex court also told the Board of control for cricket in India (BCCI) that purity of cricket should be maintained and every person at the helm of affairs must keep himself above all allegations.
The court further passed an observation saying that the BCCI are the contractor and head of the contracting party which vindicates the conflict of interest that arises when you have to decide upon the quantum of penalty against a team.
On the other hand, the BCCI told the SC that it should be permitted to decide on the penalty against CSK and Rajasthan Royals.
In the previous hearing on December 1, the court reacted sharply on the IPL scandal by asking the BCCI to give information in regards to the financial working of the apex body of cricket in the country along with the findings with respect to auction and purchase of players in IPL.
The SC also put the onus on Srinivasan to prove that there was no conflict of interest involving him that came in the way of a probe into the IPL-6 scam and took strong exception to his counsel “repeatedly” naming Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the proceedings.
On the other hand, Srinivasan’s counsel Kapil Sibal said that at no point of time was Srinivasan given an opportunity either before the Mudgal Committee or the High Court to address the issue of conflict of interest.
“They only want to remove him. They are not espousing the cause of cricket. They are espousing something else,” he said while countering allegations levelled by Cricket Association of Bihar and its Secretary Aditya Verma against Srinivasan.
Sibal said the allegation of cover up against Srinivasan was wrong as the day Meiyappan was arrested on May 24, 2013 in Mumbai, the BCCI lodged complaint against India Cements Ltd, the company in which he is a Managing Director that owns Chennai Super Kings (CSK) team.
