Sourav Ganguly cleared of conflict of interest charges by BCCI ombudsman

Niraj Gunde, an activist and journalist, raised the conflict of interest issue surrounding Ganguly in a mail to the Ombudsman few weeks back. The southpaw currently occupies three positions in the BCCI, one as the president of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) and the other as a member of the Indian Premier League (IPL) governing council to add to his position as Technical Committee Chairman.

Questions were raised against the 43-year-old, when Sanjiv Goenka, who happens to be a co-owner of the Indian Super League (ISL) franchise Atletico de Kolkata along with Ganguly, won the bid for the Pune IPL franchise. However, Justice AP Shah has cleared him of all these allegations, in a mail to Ganguly, Gunde and the BCCI, an excerpt of which has been published by ESPNcricinfo.

"The Ombudsman considered the application and the various submissions made, and found that none of the conflict of interest rules are attracted in the present instance.

"In order to examine this, it is important to understand the bidding process itself. It is clear that the bidding process involved first, the submission of sealed technical and financial bids; second, the opening of technical bids; third, the scrutiny of the technical bids by lawyers; fourth, the opening of financial bids; and fifth, the selection of the lowest bidder among those who had qualified the technical round. All of these steps were taken on the same day in the presence of all the bidders. It is clear that members of the IPL Governing Council had no role to play, more so because the final selection of the bidder was based on objective criteria, i.e., the lowest bid.

"The question arises as to whether a member of the IPL Governing Council had any role to play in the bidding process. If the person had no role to play, other than remaining present during/through the bidding process (because of the post they held), there is no reason to raise doubts about the person's role, as is the case in the present matter.

"The Ombudsman, therefore, does not view Mr Ganguly's presence or conduct in the bidding process as violating any rules of conflict of interest. The bidding process was transparent, and due process was followed," Justice AP Shah wrote in the mail.