BCCI member responsible for Lodha recommendations

A number of recommendations were actually proposed by a former state representative in the Indian cricket Board, and who is now a senior functionary in the BCCI.

The Lodha committee had prepared 135 questions and sought answers from stakeholders closer to the game.

The Supreme Court-appointed Justice R.M. Lodha committee has always maintained that it has recommended reforms in the practices and procedures of the BCCI and also drafted the amendments in the Memorandum of Association and Rules & Regulations after interacting with 74 people. This included former India captains, international and first-class players, coaches, managers, administrators, journalists, authors, lawyers and club owners, Justice Mukul Mudgal for his knowledge on sports law, the Sports Law & Policy Centre, Bengaluru, which prepared the analysis on Comparative Governance Practices in Sports for the Committee.

Read: >SC reserves order on Lodha recommendations

Finally the Committee also acknowledged, most importantly, the assistance of the BCCI and its functionaries. The committee spoke to Shashank Manohar (former BCCI President), Ajay Shirke (Present Secretary), Amitabh Chaudhary (present Jt. Secretary), Anirudh Chaudhry (present Treasurer), Anurag Thakur (present President), Gautam Roy (present Vice-President, BCCI), Rajeev Shukla (present IPL Chairman), Ratnakar Shetty (former Jt. Secretary), Sanjay Jagdale (former Secretary and Selector), Shivlal Yadav (former interim President, BCCI) and the late BCCI President, Jagmohan Dalmiya.

Read: >Did BCCI lobby to remove Manohar as ICC Chairman?

The committee also prepared 135 questions and sought answers from stakeholders closer to the game.

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While the BCCI has consistently opposed many recommendations, especially in the rewritten Memorandum of Association, Rules and Regulations, right from the time the reforms in cricket committee came into the public domain and thereafter approved by the Supreme Court on July 18, it has come to light that a number of recommendations were actually proposed by a former state representative in the Indian cricket Board, and who is now a senior functionary in the BCCI.

People in the know say that it was this particular official who proposed that the Cricket Club of India (Mumbai) and National Cricket Club (Kolkata) be stripped of full member status. He also recommended the appointment of a government agency to monitor BCCI’s financial aspect, that the various committees be disbanded, that there was need for the one state, one member, one vote law to come into effect and that the election process needs to be streamlined.

The BCCI and the full member units have explained to the apex court the difficulties in implementing the reforms in whole, discussed themselves at the working committee, annual general and special general meetings. They have opposed some of the rules that one of its senior members had actually proposed during his interaction with the three-member committee in former Chief Justice of India, R.M. Lodha, Ashok Bhan and R.V. Raveendran.