SC decision on Lodha panel report likely in three weeks

India's Supreme Court has reserved its judgement in the case concerning implementation of the Lodha Committee recommendations by the BCCI. There will be no further hearing in the case and the two-judge bench, comprising Chief Justice TS Thakur and Justice Ibrahim Kalifulla, will submit the written judgement to the concerned parties. The judgement is likely to be delivered before July 21, the date when Justice Kalifulla retires.

The hearings in the case concluded on Thursday afternoon (June 30) after senior legal counsel KK Venugopal, representing the BCCI, wrapped up his arguments. Before concluding his defence, which lasted nearly 90 minutes, Venugopal said that the BCCI was happy to implement every recommendation made by the Lodha committee barring "six or seven". These included: restrictions on ministers and bureaucrats being part of the BCCI and state associations, 'one state, one vote', presence of a nominee of the Comptroller and Auditor General on the apex council, and an age cap of 70 years for office-bearers.

In May, former BCCI president Shashank Manohar had stated five recommendations the board was opposed to: advertisements between overs during a match broadcast, 'one state, one vote', the presence of two members from IPL franchises on the league's governing council, the formation of an apex council, and a cap on the tenure of the office bearers.

Venugopal argued that that there could not be any judicial review of the board's activities and read out previous judgments to stress his point. He said that the BCCI was not a corporate body, but a society which is a "conglomeration of members" protected under Article 19 (1) (c) of the Constitution of India. The specific constitutional clause relates to the right to form an association and Venugopal said the court must not interfere with that right.

The BCCI counsel said that the Indian board had already accepted and implemented most of the recommendations by the Lodha committee, such as: appointments of the chief executive officer and chief financial officer; recruitment of consultants like Pricewaterhouse Coopers to audit accounts of the BCCI and state associations; organisation of cricket camps under the guidance of former India players like Dilip Vengsarkar, Kiran More and Shiv Sunder Das in the north-eastern states under a scheme to develop the game in new areas.

However, when Venugopal pointed out that the BCCI had taken action against officials of the Goa Cricket Association, who were arrested for alleged fraud, both the bench as well as amicus curiae Gopal Subramanium stated the board had failed to maintain checks and balances for a long time.

Venugopal claimed the BCCI reacted proactively and swiftly as it suspended GCA president Chetan Desai from the board's marketing committee and association secretary Vinod Phadke from the information and technology committee. Incidentally, Desai, Phadke and treasurer Akbar Mulla, who was also arrested, are still office bearers in the association.

Subramanium praised the BCCI for its action but pointed out that it had come a bit late. He told the court the board had done nothing for years, disbursing funds to the state associations without asking what the money was being used for, who was using it and how it was being utilised. Apart from Goa, Subramanium pointed to the Delhi & District Cricket Association (DDCA) and Saurashtra Cricket Association as examples of the board's oversight.

"A total of Rs 141 crore has been given to GCA from 2010-11. When Justice Mudgal was appointed (by Delhi High Court to oversee the conduct of the fourth Test against South Africa last year) he could not believe the sorry state of affairs (at the DDCA). In Saurashtra one whole family are the members of a cricket association," Subramanium told the court.

He cited another example of malfeasance at DDCA, where 14 members were listed as staying at a single address that was only 48 square metres in area. "How many members can live in 48 square metres? But from one such address, there are 14 members in the DDCA," Subramanium said. When Justice Thakur asked whether all 14 members were from one family, Subramanium said that was not the case: "Puris, Walias, Ahluwalias, all under one roof that is only 48 square metres."

Justice Thakur asked whether the big-name auditors like PWC were actually checking what the funds were being used for. "If you are giving Rs 200 crore are there much verifications being done, are there safeguards against misappropriation? If you had a system in place, this [GCA] would not have happened today," Justice Thakur said. He then suggested that it was important for the board to conduct a "performance audit" and have a robust mechanism of safeguards in place.

In fact, a performance audit is one of the recommendations made by the Lodha panel that was appointed in January 2015 by the court - in the aftermath of the investigation into the IPL 2013 corruption scandal - to examine and suggest changes to the functioning of the Indian cricket board.

Venugopal said the BCCI had also taken action against associations like the Bihar Cricket Association and the Jammu & Kashmir Cricket Association recently by cutting off their funds. Nalini Chidambaram, the counsel for Cricket Association for Bihar, the original petitioner in the IPL 2013 corruption case, countered Venugopal and said the board had punished the Bihar Cricket Association by "actually giving them funds worth Rs 50 lakh".

Justice Thakur responded to Venugopal's defence by saying, "Someone has swindled you. How is the BCCI claiming credit? There was no fact-finding mission set up. Now since May 10, you have been seeking utilisation certificates but what happened before that? Why were you sleeping all these years? Why were utilisation certifications not sought? You were disbursing funds without the utilisation certificates." The chief justice added that by stopping funds the BCCI was hurting the interests of the game and the players, without allowing them to "flourish".

The court was also shown an interview of BCCI president Anurag Thakur where he said that if the Lodha committee recommendations were adopted, it would set the BCCI back by 20 years. "Send Test cricket back by 20 years," the chief justice remarked, in response.

Over the last few months, the Supreme Court has been critical of the board's reluctance to adopt the Lodha recommendations. The judges have slammed the BCCI's method of disbursing funds to state associations and also rebuffed arguments made by the state associations and the board against the Lodha panel recommendations, which were made public in January this year. A month after the report, the Court also set the BCCI a deadline to make its stance clear on the recommendations or deal with the possibility of having the court implement it for them.