The Board of Control for Cricket in India is taking the Justice Rajendra Mal Lodha Committee "head on, questioning in the Supreme Court quite a few recommendations and the difficulty in implementing them" without compromising its position as a "private and autonomous body," according to IANS. The Indian cricket board "has been under fire, first from all those people who deposed before the Justice Mudgal Committee," which went into corruption in the Indian Premier League, and then the report submitted by the Lodha Committee, "which recommended far-reaching guidelines to run cricket in the country." The Supreme Court constituted both the committees "after a public outcry over spot-fixing and other corrupt practices in the popular Twenty20 league." On the Lodha Committee's recommendation, two IPL franchises, Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, "have been suspended for two years and the panel has also recommended sweeping changes in the governance of the board." The board and its affiliates "took their own sweet time in reacting, raising doubts over its sincerity in implementing the report." For the first time, the counsel for the board "clearly told the court that it is a private and autonomous body and it cannot allow" a nominee of the Comptroller and Auditor General to sit on its committees as that would "amount to government interference in its working." The board "went a step further to tell the court that there is a danger" of the Int'l Cricket Council derecognizing it if the government is allowed to interfere (IANS, 4/13).
