BCCI’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) next month will likely see an attempt to amend major clauses in the Justice RM Lodha Committee report for the cricket body’s reforms.
The agenda for the AGM on December 1, circulated to its units, proposes amendments to key clauses in BCCI’s new statute, drawn up on the basis of the Lodha report and approved by the Supreme Court. It is seen as a bid to remove the ‘cooling-off’ period, to allow president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah—their terms are now to 10 months—get a full term.
Elected in October, both have to step down next year unless the AGM tweaks the clause that requires office-bearers to enter a three-year cooling-off period after six years in office, in a state unit or BCCI. The SC will have to approve the amendments.
Gopal Sankaranarayanan, secretary of the Lodha panel when it made the report, criticised the bid to dilute clauses in a report approved by the court in 2016.
“If they are allowed to, there is no point in the reforms process,” he said on Tuesday. “Tomorrow, they will recall all the changes they want, take us back to square one, get rid of the players’ association, players’ representatives, conflict of interest resolution, ombudsman; all aspects of it, including the 70-year age cap, cooling off, get rid of it and just sit back. It would be a waste of time for everyone.”
The new BCCI constitution makes it clear it will have to get the Apex court’s approval for any changes. Clause 45, on amendment and repeal, says, “These rules and regulations of the BCCI will not be repealed, added to, amended or altered except when passed and adopted by a 3/4th majority of the members present and entitled to vote at a Special General Meeting of the General Body convened for the purpose or at the AGM. Any such amendment will not be given effect to without the leave of the Honourable Supreme Court.”
