The first task for the four-member Committee of Administrators (COA) comprising Vinod Rai (former Comptroller and Auditor General of India), Ramchandra Guha (writer and historian), Vikram Limaye (Managing Director, Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC) and former India women’s team captain Diana Edulji (an employee of Western Railway until a year ago) will be to get the BCCI to adopt the Memorandum of Association and Rules and Regulations as specified in Annexure-A of the Justice Lodha Committee report and also make the State and member associations amend their Constitutions/Bylaws to bring them in terms with the Lodha report and the Supreme Court judgment.
The BCCI is a registered body under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act and its members — other than the Railways, Services, All India Universities (all recommended to be relegated as associate members) — are registered under the Companies Act or its State Registrar of Societies. All along, the full members have stated in the court and in the public domain that they function as per the direction given by clubs and individual members around which their associations’ foundation is based on and a two-third or three-fourth majority will be required to amend the by-laws.
The BCCI’s full members feel bitter about a number of aspects of the recommendations that has dwelt upon term and tenure of elected office bearers (9 years at State and BCCI with a cooling off period of three years after every three-year term), an age cap of 70 for elected councillors and barring government ministers and servants from contesting for a position in the BCCI.
It also wanted to help the players form an association and fund their activities, replace the working committee with an apex council that will have a place for male and female nominated by the players association, set three member selection committees and give more power to the CEO.
At the outset, the BCCI and its members did not comply with two significant parts of the recommendations that aimed at radical reforms in cricket to achieve transparency and accountability. The BCCI members met once at the Cricket Centre in Mumbai, considered the recommendations threadbare and expressed reservations on majority of the recommendations.
When Shashank Manohar was the president, the BCCI appointed A.P.Shah as Ombudsman for 11 months, starting from November 2015. He did not have a great experience though.
The BCCI also appointed its auditor Deloitte, a leading accounting firm in the world, to carry out the "Project Transformation" work to (1) Strengthen its organisation/governance structure (2) Revolutionise its operational practices (3) Formalise the policies and procedures in line with world-class standards (4) Improve the financial controls and processes etc (5) Identify opportunities for operational effectiveness and efficiency (6) advise the BCCI as it develops the detailed Accounting Manual and Standard Operating Practices (SOP) on an end to end basis and put in place a comprehensive Internal Control & Financial Reporting (ICFR) platform duly considering the best practices and providing various recommendations for process and control improvements/cost control/strengthening/governance/compliance mechanisms through Gap Analysis
The BCCI’s CEO Rahul Johri will soon submit a list of recommendations that the BCCI complied with. The four COA will find impediments on their way to enforce the implementation of Justice Lodha Committee recommendations.
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