In an SGM on Wednesday, the BCCI agreed to undertake most of the recommendations made by the Lodha committee © India Today Group/Getty Images
After several months of staunch resistance, the BCCI members – state associations – have unanimously decided to implement most of the Lodha Committee recommendations with the exception of five broad reforms. The BCCI took the decision at a special general meeting (SGM) in Delhi on Wednesday, which was attended by all members including the newly-inducted north-eastern states.
The recommendations that the BCCI said it has difficulty implementing include: membership status which includes the one-state-one-vote reform, disqualification of office bearers, ministers and government officials based on eligibility criteria such as the age cap, tenure and cooling off period, the strength of the Apex Council – which replaces the existing working committee, the division of powers between the office bearers and the professional management, and strength of the national selection committee.
All five recommendations singled out by the BCCI on Wednesday have been raised by board members consistently in the past as major stumbling blocks preventing reforms.
The one-state-one-vote recommendation primarily affects six members – Maharashtra, Mumbai, Vidarbha, Gujarat, Baroda and Saurashtra. According to the Lodha Committee, the six votes would be reduced to two with rotating representation at the board meetings every year. However, the BCCI wants the existing membership status to be restored. The BCCI also wants the voting powers granted at present to government institutions comprising Railways, Services and the Universities to be retained.
The most contentious reform the BCCI is against is the eligibility criteria for an office bearer or a representative of a state association to attend board meetings. The BCCI wants a cooling-off period of three years after every term applicable to an office bearer removed because a maximum tenure of nine years has already been prescribed. It also does not want to impose the 70-year age cap put in place by the Lodha Committee for office bearers and administrators. The Indian board is also against not allowing government employees to be part of any board committee.
Another area that concerns the BCCI is the distribution of power granted to the office bearers and the board’s professional management, led by the CEO. Under the existing system, the BCCI secretary informally carries out the role of the CEO and shares the power with the board president.
Under the Lodha Committee’s recommendations, the role of the office bearers would be diminished while the CEO would be granted significant independent decision-making powers. Many of the BCCI members are against ceding control.
The Lodha Committee had also suggested replacing the powerful BCCI working committee, which approves all decisions, with a nine-member Apex Council, comprising five office bearers – president, secretary, joint-secretary, treasurer and a vice-president – and a single representative from the general body (all BCCI members). At the SGM on Wednesday, the BCCI argued that the number of representatives from the general body – ideally one from each of the five zones – should sit on the Apex Council.
The final reform the BCCI wanted the court to reconsider is increasing the number of heads on the national selection panel to five, two more than the Lodha Committee’s recommendation. The BCCI had already trimmed the selection panel to three, immediately after the Supreme Court approved the recommendations last year.
On July 18 last year, the Supreme Court had approved the recommendations and asked the BCCI to implement them within six months from that seminal order. The BCCI remained unaffected. The court then put in place a Committee of Administrators on January 30 this year tasking it with implementing the recommendations.
Various BCCI members raised objections, pointing out some of the recommendations could not be practically implemented and went against the constitution of both the board and their respective state associations.
On Monday, the Supreme Court directed the BCCI to implement as many recommendations as were “practicable” at the SGM. The court also pointed out that it would revisit some of the recommendations the BCCI had highlighted in the past.
According to more than one BCCI members who attended the SGM, the moderate tone of the court’s order on Monday gave an extra leash to those who stalled the reform process. “When the Supreme Court is giving us the liberty to choose [which recommendations to implement], then why object?” a member who attended the SGM said. “When the court itself is not keen in implementing some reforms and it openly says some are impracticable then how can they persuade the members?”
Nagraj Gollapudi is a senior assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo