With the BCCI’s member units not adopting the Lodha Committee recommendations at the board’s special general meeting on Monday, the Committee of Administrators (CoA) has said it has been left with little choice but to ask the Supreme Court to enforce the reforms. A CoA official said there was no other way to adopt the new constitution given that the BCCI setup a fresh committee to identify the difficulties in implementing the Supreme Court’s July 18 order rather than accept the Lodha recommendations.
“Our hope was that they would pass the resolution and move forward, indicating willingness to reform and progress,” the official told ESPNcricinfo. “We told them that if they don’t do that then we will have to get the court to enforce. How else will the constitution be adopted otherwise?”
With a number of member units of the BCCI having filed affidavits in the Supreme Court against the implementation of the Lodha recommendations, the CoA had tried to impress upon them that stalling the implementation of the reforms would be counterproductive. Instead, the Supreme Court-appointed committee had urged the state bodies to filter their objections to the recommendations to a few points and submit them to the court for reconsideration. This, the CoA had reiterated at its meeting with the state associations on the eve of the SGM, would be beneficial to all parties concerned.
The BCCI’s old guard, though, has indicated that it wants to brazen it out. A veteran state association official from the south zone argued that there was no guarantee that the Supreme Court would reconsider the recommendations the member units objected to. “There is nothing in writing,” he said. “If the court says ‘the BCCI is abolished’ we will all go. But, I will not [voluntarily] jump into the river. Let us see what happens on July 14.”
The BCCI’s seven-member committee, headed by IPL chairman Rajiv Shukla, is likely to submit a report on July 10, four days before the Supreme Court’s hearing. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court-appointed CoA is meeting on July 1 to discuss the next course of action. “We have to discuss what we have to do, now that the SGM has passed the decision of creating a committee,” the CoA official said. “We won’t finalise the status reports [to be sent to the Supreme Court] on July 1. It will be filed a bit later than that.”