On Thursday, the Supreme Court of India will hear the Board of Control for Cricket in India's response to the Lodha Committee's status report, which had recommended that the board's top officials -- the president, secretary, joint secretary and treasurer -- be "superseded" with "immediate effect" and replaced by a panel of administrators, according to Nagraj Gollapudi of ESPN.com. The Committee said that such a step "was necessary because the BCCI had failed to put in place recommendations" passed by the Supreme Court by the Sept. 30 deadline. While passing the order on July 18, the Supreme Court had asked the BCCI to "follow the directives of the Lodha Committee, which was put in charge of overseeing the process of overhauling the governance structure of the board." The Lodha Committee said that the BCCI had "not complied with as many as seven timelines" by the deadline of Sept. 30. The board had not accepted the fresh Memorandum of Association and rules and regulations, "which would have been an indicator of the BCCI deciding to implement the recommendations." According to Lodha, several decisions taken at the BCCI's AGM "were contrary to the committee's recommendations." After the meeting in Mumbai, the BCCI said it had "unanimously" accepted "important recommendations" of the Lodha Committee. In fact, it had "selectively accepted recommendations," and the key ones not adopted included: an age cap of 70 for BCCI administrators, a maximum term of nine years and a cooling off period of three years between each three-year term, and the one-state-one-vote policy (ESPN.com, 10/5). THE HINDU's Suresh Menon wrote there might be a "philosophical insight to be gained from an immoveable body meeting an irresistible force." But when the BCCI is the body, and the Supreme Court is the force, the "fallout for cricket could be dire." The BCCI has been ignoring the Supreme Court deadlines with an "arrant disregard for propriety or legality." The Supreme Court has been "getting into the nuts and bolts of administration and laying itself open to charges of judicial overreach." The BCCI’s brinkmanship "will end unhappily" if the Supreme Court decides on Wednesday to appoint administrators to run cricket, replacing President Anurag Thakur and other elected office-bearers. The BCCI has no "one to blame but itself." When it was still possible to explain its position to the Lodha Committee, "it assumed a divine right to administration." The "combination of inaction and arrogance upset the Committee" (THE HINDU, 10/4).
SUPER KINGS SUSPENSION: THE HINDU's Krishnadas Rajagopal reported the Supreme Court "reserved its orders" on Tuesday on a petition filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy challenging the Lodha Committee’s decision to suspend Indian Premier League side Chennai Super Kings for two years over the '13 betting scam involving its top official Gurunath Meiyappan. A bench led by Chief Justice T.S. Thakur said that it would "pronounce orders on the petition which alleged that the PIL filed by the Cricket Association of Bihar through its office-bearer Aditya Verma was staged." This PIL "was the basis of a Supreme Court judgement constituting the Justice Lodha Committee" (THE HINDU, 10/4).
