CoA deny Amitabh Choudhary’s request to travel to Australia

The tussle for power between the Committee of Administrators and the BCCI officials seems like a never-ending affair. The former looks like the stronger of the two as the CoA enjoy the backing of the Supreme Court. The SC-appointed committee exercised their power once more as they denied BCCI secretary general Amitabh Choudhary’s formal application to travel to Australia in the coming weeks.

Choudhary had put in an application to travel to Australia in order to attend the selection committee meeting which will be held on December 24. However, in a report in TOI, inside sources revealed that the Vinod Rai-led CoA rejected Choudhary’s application saying that when four of the five selectors will be in India, there was no point of him being there in person. That source further added that added the CoA has instructed that only chairman of the selection committee MSK Prasad will be available for the December 24 meeting along with the Indian skipper, Virat Kohli. The rest of the four selectors and Choudhary, who is the convenor of the meeting, will join the meeting from India via video conference. The December 24 meeting between Prasad and Kohli is to finalise the Indian ODI squad for the Australia and New Zealand limited overs series.

“He has been asked to convene the meeting from India,” a source told TOI.

This is the third time in the calendar year that the CoA have rejected Choudhary’s plea to travel overseas. In March, the CoA had cancelled Choudhary’s trip to Sri Lanka after he failed to explain the functional duty of the entire trip. CoA again restricted Choudhary’s proposed extended trip from Ireland to England from July 26 to June 8.