It is not for the Court-appointed committees to continue to take care of the game, says PS Narsimha
Amicus Curiae PS Narsimha has called for a quick handover of Indian cricket from the Committee of Administrators and feels that the BCCI is swiftly moving towards holding its own elections. He has also added that a nine-member Apex Council was never a "mandate" of the Lodha Committee.
Ever since the Supreme Court sacked both Anurag Thakur and Ajay Shirke from their positions and appointed a Committee of Administrators to take care of Indian cricket, the election is a thing of pure innuendo and speculations. However, PS Narsimha, the Supreme Court-appointed amicus curiae, has called for a quick handover of Indian cricket from the courts, lawyers and court-appointed committees back to the organizers, who he said, is meant to be the shot-caller in Indian cricket.
"Ultimately, it is for the organisers of cricket to take care of the game. It is not for courts to take care of the game. It is not for the lawyers to take care of the game. It is not for the Court appointed committees to continue to take care of the game," Narsimha told PTI.
"It is for the cricket organisers to do it and these organisers are the elected bodies. Now the reforms require that they associate cricketers also. They take care of the game, that's all. I think things are moving positively. The process of reforms commenced long back has taken time. Now it is time for implementation," he added.
As per the Lodha Committee recommendations, formed in totality in 2016 before being partially modified in 2018, the BCCI apex council will have nine members in their body and that will comprise the president, vice president, secretary, joint secretary, treasurer, two players’ representative (male and female), CAG representative, one member from state unit. However, with most state units having different voter composition, they wanted a change to it and asked for a bigger pool to form the council.Â
In April’s meeting, Narsimha was understood to have learnt about the reservations and had discussions with Committee of Administrators (CoA) as well as the majority of the affiliated units so as to ensure that the contentious issue is now on the verge of being sorted. Now, he clarified that the composition of a nine-member Apex Council was never a "mandate" of the Lodha Committee, and further clarified that the combined tenure for any office-bearer in state and parent body is 18 years.
"I thought confining (apex council composition) as a matter of rule to nine for every state association is something that is number one not logical and secondly, it wasn't the mandate of Lodha Commission. Thirdly, it wasn't the direction of the court. I spoke to CoA and told them that the system won't work if you confine it to nine-member Apex council for state associations. After lot of deliberations, CoA also agreed it must be varied from place to place and importantly independence and character of the state association to a large extent was retrieved back.
"The total number of years in BCCI is 9 years and in state association is also 9 years. So the total is 18 years. The last judgement made an observation which seemed to have created confusion as to whether it is 9 or 18."