Conflict of interest rules adopted in principle, says BCCI chief

The Hindu

BCCI president Shashank Manohar and secretary Anurag Thakur at a press conference after the AGM in Mumbai on Monday. Photo: Vivek Bendre

Scindia and Raman express serious misgivings about the Ombudsman’s role

Not all in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) are happy with outsiders being brought into its administration; this was evident when the annual general meeting (AGM) did not accept the proposal to bring in three experts in finance and administration into the IPL Governing Council.

It is understood that Jyotiraditya Scindia (Madhya Pradesh) and P.S. Raman (Tamil Nadu) expressed serious misgivings about the role to be given to the Ombudsman (ethics officer) who will deal with conflicts of interest and also the proposal to name three outsiders in the IPL GC.

While all changes to the rules and regulations and amendments to the constitution were approved in principle, the proposed rules, regulations and amendments would be rewritten and probably amalgamated with the recommendations of best practices and reforms to be submitted to the Supreme Court by the Justice R.M. Lodha committee.

BCCI president Shashank Manohar, who is driving the reforms process within the Board, appeared happy with the way the BCCI members responded to his proposals.

Unanimous

“Today at the AGM, all members were unanimous in their approach and were interested in seeing that the Board functions in the most transparent manner. Contrary to the expectations of the media, the members unanimously approved the rules with regard to conflict of interest, they also unanimously approved the amendments to the constitution and everybody spoke in favour of clean and transparent functioning of the Board,” he said.

As a result of some parleys that took place at Sunday evening’s dinner party hosted by the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA), Sharad Pawar in particular, a three-member committee headed by P.S. Raman has been appointed to rework the long list of rules and regulations.

“Principally we have decided the issues regarding conflict of interest. Certain details have to be worked out; so all those detailing will be done by the Legal Committee, which will be headed by Bharat Raman [P.S. Raman]. It should be done in two months’ time,” said the BCCI president.

“With regard to the amendments pertaining to one clause related to the IPL GC and whether we should have three independent persons from outside, that was deferred because members wanted to further deliberate on that issue; the rest has been accepted,” he said.

The BCCI chief said that since the Working Committee is a constitutional committee, no changes were made to it and that the sizes of the other committees have been trimmed as per the proposals.

Rajeev Shukla, who has done much of the hard work in the last several months, has been retained IPL chairman, with four more colleagues from the Board, including former India captain and CAB president Sourav Ganguly.

Other members of the committee are Jyotiraditya Scindia, Mohinder Pandove and Ajay Shirke. The Indian team director Ravi Shastri cannot be part of the GC because of his association with the national team, which is a paid job.

“Whatever I had said a month ago — that we would clean up the system and try to run the Board in a more transparent fashion — we have done it; the other things will be put in place soon. The Ombudsman appointed by the Board is Justice (retd) A.P. Shah, who will look into complaints, if any, with regard to conflict of interest,” said Manohar.

With regard to running the IPL after the resignation of Sundar Raman, the BCCI chief said: “For the present, the BCCI is looking internally. If required, we will engage somebody. But, as all of you are aware, IMG is paid Rs. 28 crore by the Board and it is the primary responsibility of the IMG to run IPL. Therefore, we have told the IMG officials that it is their responsibility to run the IPL.”

With India likely to play 12 home Tests next year, the BCCI has upgraded Pune, Visakhapatnam, Ranchi, Rajkot, Indore and Dharamshala as Test venues. There are issues with DDCA, while the stadium at Ahmedabad is under renovation.