Supreme Court to hear BCCI urgent plea on constitutional amendment on Monday

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta requested the court to take up the matter soon as the annual general meetings for the BCCI and various state cricketing bodies had to be held without further delay.

REPRESENTATIVE IMAGE: BCCI has urged the court to revise a rule in its new Constitution which mandates that administrators have to go through a three-year cooling-off period after successive years in the BCCI or any State association. | Photo Credit: AFP

The Supreme Court agreed to urgently hear on Monday a plea by Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to amend its Constitution.

The case has been on the board of a Bench led by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, but adjourned multiple times due to paucity of time.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta requested the court on Thursday to take up the matter soon as the annual general meetings for the BCCI and various state cricketing bodies had to be held without further delay.

“We have to hold the AGMs... We are losing time,” Mr. Mehta, appearing for one of the state associations, pleaded.

The case is significant for BCCI as the date of amendments may decide the tenures of its president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah.

The case, which was originally before former Chief Justice N.V. Ramana’s Bench, was recently shifted to the Bench led by Justice Chandrachud.

Justice Chandrachud had dealt with the BCCI case earlier and even written a judgment in the case.

The apex court had in June appointed senior advocate Maninder Singh as its new amicus curiae while adjourning the case. Mr. Singh had replaced P.S. Narasimha, who was appointed a Supreme Court judge.

BCCI has urged the court to revise a rule in its new Constitution which mandates that administrators have to go through a three-year cooling-off period after successive years in the BCCI or any State association.

The ‘cooling-off period’ was a major recommendation made by the Justice R.M. Lodha Committee to reform cricket administration in the country.

In its 2018 judgment, the apex court had seen eye-to-eye with Justice Lodha’s conclusion that “the game will be better off without cricketing oligopolies”.

For this end, the court had supported the recommendation of the Justice Lodha panel that cricket administrators should undergo a “cooling-off period” before contesting elections to BCCI or state associations.